A Pinch
of This
Oct 30 2014
The old woman with the thick arms
and flour-dusted apron.
Who will leave no recipe cards
or well-thumbed pages,
butter-stained
with a cinnamon scent.
Because she bakes by heart
and eye, and hand;
a pinch of this, a taste of that,
adding and subtracting
by feel.
Who knows the batter by touch
and cooks until it's done,
cooling on the kitchen counter
on a wire rack.
Under faded tea towels, ironed flat,
flimsy as gauze
from wash after wash.
Her imprecision
is not evasion,
unlike those other old ladies
who are vague about measurement
or somehow forget
the secret ingredient.
She simply cannot say;
because it's art, not chemistry
and how nonsensical would it be
to bake-by-number?
And if I said
the secret ingredient was love
you'd call me a dumb romantic.
Which must be why
I can’t stop smelling her bread,
melted butter
drizzled on top.
Whisked from the oven
and still too warm to cut.
I read an excerpt from the musician Alan Doyle's new memoir Where I Belong: From Small Town to Great Big Sea. He talks about his mother's home-made bread, and transcribes an amusing dialogue between him and his mother as he asks her for the recipe. This is a common story: the experienced baker with the "secret" recipes that are never written down -- recipes that seem improvised, but somehow always come out right.
I barely remember my maternal grandmother; but she was a similarly celebrated baker. (Unfortunately, the baking gene seems to have skipped my own dear mother!) I bake one thing, and that's the world's best(!) banana bread. Last batch I made, I reflected on the fact that I do it all by feel, as well: there is a recipe written down somewhere, but I never refer to it. And if someone were to try to use that written version as a guide, it probably wouldn't work. So perhaps I'm turning into that sturdy flour-dusted old lady myself! We're not keeping secrets; it's just that we've done it enough, we know it by heart.
The old woman with the thick arms
and flour-dusted apron.
Who will leave no recipe cards
or well-thumbed pages,
butter-stained
with a cinnamon scent.
Because she bakes by heart
and eye, and hand;
a pinch of this, a taste of that,
adding and subtracting
by feel.
Who knows the batter by touch
and cooks until it's done,
cooling on the kitchen counter
on a wire rack.
Under faded tea towels, ironed flat,
flimsy as gauze
from wash after wash.
Her imprecision
is not evasion,
unlike those other old ladies
who are vague about measurement
or somehow forget
the secret ingredient.
She simply cannot say;
because it's art, not chemistry
and how nonsensical would it be
to bake-by-number?
And if I said
the secret ingredient was love
you'd call me a dumb romantic.
Which must be why
I can’t stop smelling her bread,
melted butter
drizzled on top.
Whisked from the oven
and still too warm to cut.
I read an excerpt from the musician Alan Doyle's new memoir Where I Belong: From Small Town to Great Big Sea. He talks about his mother's home-made bread, and transcribes an amusing dialogue between him and his mother as he asks her for the recipe. This is a common story: the experienced baker with the "secret" recipes that are never written down -- recipes that seem improvised, but somehow always come out right.
I barely remember my maternal grandmother; but she was a similarly celebrated baker. (Unfortunately, the baking gene seems to have skipped my own dear mother!) I bake one thing, and that's the world's best(!) banana bread. Last batch I made, I reflected on the fact that I do it all by feel, as well: there is a recipe written down somewhere, but I never refer to it. And if someone were to try to use that written version as a guide, it probably wouldn't work. So perhaps I'm turning into that sturdy flour-dusted old lady myself! We're not keeping secrets; it's just that we've done it enough, we know it by heart.
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