Chapter 18
Back at Yeast of Eden, Felix Macron and his crew were still buzzing around the kitchen. As always, he wore a white chef’s shirt. It had three-quarter sleeves and buttons running up the right side of it. His belly was looking even rounder then it had been a week ago. Felix was an amazing baker and he liked to partake of all he baked. I couldn’t blame him. It was all so good.
His hair was shorn close to the scalp and his light eyes were a glorious contrast to his black skin. A dimple etched into his cheek as his face lit up with a smile when he saw me. “Ivy!”
We did an elbow bump in greeting. “You’re here late, Felix,” I said. Normally he was gone by late morning. It was almost one thirty.
“The Spring Fling waits for no one.”
“Indeed, it does not,” I said. I looked around the busy kitchen. Olaya had extra bakers working to get the regular Friday restaurant orders complete while we also worked on the Spring Fling offerings.
“How are we doing?” Olaya called from her office off the side of the kitchen.
Felix and I moved to the doorway. She sat at her desk, pen in hand, making notes on a pad of paper. She had her apron on, legs crossed. A wide black-and-white scarf was wound around her head, the ends tied into a knot under one ear. She wore wide-legged black pants and a gray short-sleeved T-shirt. How she managed to wear black and not have it covered with flour dust was a mystery to me. She always looked fresh and clean and as if she’d just arrived for the day, but I knew she’d already spent hours in her commercial kitchen working alongside Felix before I’d arrived.
“I’ve got the steak rolls for Sofia’s Steakhouse rising,” Felix said. “Working on the star bread next. Five full stars, and twenty-five star points to wrap and sell separately.”
Olaya nodded her approval. “Fillings?”
“Keeping it simple. Strawberry jam.”
“Perfect,” she said with an approving nod.
“And we’re doing the van Dough focaccia, right?” I asked.
“And the hot cross buns,” she said. “We will need an early start tomorrow to finish the baking first thing and set up at the festival.”
As if we’d synchronized our next movements, the three of us scattered to our prep stations. I started rolling out the focaccia rounds from the already-prepared dough.
Three hours later, the rest of the crew was gone, but the three of us were still hard at work. Usually the bread shop was prepped for the next day and locked up by four o’clock. Not today. The van Dough focaccias took time. I printed out several pictures to use as models for the vegetable placement. Piece by piece, the focaccias became stunning representations of the Dutch postimpressionist painter’s work. Olaya and I even got creative enough to make a rendition of his field of irises.
While Felix worked to finish up the star bread, we covered each and every tray of focaccias—and there were many—with plastic wrap, moving them all onto racks in the walk-in refrigerator. I stopped to stare at the baking that lay ahead of us in the morning. It didn’t even include the overnight hot cross buns. “Will we be able to get it all done in time?” I asked.
“I’m coming in at three thirty,” Felix said, a grin on his face.
He might be the only person on the face of the earth who’d feel excited about starting work at that ungodly hour. I couldn’t deny it, though. He was definitely happy. Or even giddy.
Olaya patted his back. “He is a good boy.” She looked up at him. “You are a good boy.”
I laughed. Felix was a twenty-six-year-old man and I was beginning to realize that Olaya loved him as a son.
“We’ll get it done,” Felix said, answering my question more directly.
Looking at him, I knew we would. I only wish I felt as confident about exonerating Miguel and finding Nessa Renchrik’s killer. I wondered if her death would cast a pall over the Spring Fling. We’d see tomorrow.
“We will make the dough for the hot cross buns. It will rise overnight; then we will bake on in the morning before the event,” Olaya said to me. She looked at Felix. “Go home. Get some rest.”
He covered the star bread trays, slid them onto the rack in the refrigerator, and checked to make sure he’d cleaned up his station before heading out.
Alone in the kitchen, Olaya and I set to work on the hot cross buns. Just hearing the words sent me back to my childhood. I hadn’t had one since my mother had made them when I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old. There were a lot of stories regarding the history of the buns and the marking of the cross on top. From spring festivals in pagan Britain where the cross was said to represent the four seasons, to a twelfth-century Anglican monk who marked the buns with crosses to represent Good Friday, to the story of a widow in England who hung a marked bun on her door every Good Friday until her son returned home from a sea journey, the spiced sweet rolls had become a symbol of spring and were said to bring good luck to any baker who made them, and to everyone who ate the buns that baker prepared.
Olaya believed in the long-rise method of bread making. Apparently, the same method was used with her hot cross buns. The dough would slowly rise in the refrigerator overnight and they’d be ready to bake first thing in the morning.
“I haven’t photographed either the hot cross buns or the star bread. I’ll do that tomorrow and add the pictures to the website.”
“Bueno,” she said. She retreated to her office and returned, handing me an envelope.
My paycheck. I smiled, grateful for it. My hours at Yeast of Eden helped fulfill my desire to bake bread, but they also helped me make ends meet while I built up my photography clientele. “Thank you.”
She smiled, her eyes sparkling as she silently communicated what we both felt. We were the family we’d chosen for each other.
I folded the envelope and tucked it into my back pocket. Leaning against the stainless-steel workstation, I gathered up the front of my apron in my hands. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Sylvia Cabrera.”
“Pobrecita. And her daughter, left here without her mother. It is a shame.”
I knew firsthand what it meant to lose a parent. Guillermo and Sylvia’s child, as well as Rachel and Tate, would feel the effects of their loss for the rest of their lives. I tried to swallow down the lump that rose from my gut to my throat, but it remained firmly in place. I didn’t know if I could trust it, and I didn’t know how, but my gut was telling me that Sylvia Cabrera’s story was intertwined with Nessa’s in a way I didn’t yet understand.
I put my thoughts to the side and set to work, following Olaya’s lead. She was all about small-batch preparation whenever possible. We worked at our respective stations, starting by making the sponge by warming milk in the microwave, then adding sugar, yeast, and whole wheat flour. We let our sponges sit until they became bubbly, meanwhile whisking the butter until it was fluffy, then adding the rest of the milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and eggs. After mixing the sponge into our respective bowls, we added the rest of the flour, stirring until we each had a stiff ball of dough.
Next came my favorite part—the kneading. Something about curling my fingers into the soft dough, folding and turning, folding and turning, was meditative. As I worked, I realized the logical next step in my secret investigation.
We let our doughs rise as we started the next batch. Finally, we rolled the dough into twelve-inch logs, divided each log into eight equal portions, and shaped each portion into a ball. We finished placing them in greased round pans, covering them, and sliding them into the refrigerator to rise overnight.
Olaya looked at me and smiled. “You have come a long way, Ivy.”
Wasn’t that the truth. When I’d first met her, I’d been standing outside Yeast of Eden not knowing my future lay just inside. I’d been more than a little lost. Olaya, as they say, read me like an open book. She’d brought me into her kitchen, and I’d been by her side ever since. She’d introduced me to the tradition of long-rise bread baking; to the joy of digging my hands into a bowl of dough and kneading out the tension in my both my head and body; to the magic of bread.
I was forever changed.
“You’ve taught me well,” I said.
She handed me a loaf of lemon poppyseed bread. “For you,” she said. “Go home. It will all sort itself out.”
I hoped she was right.