The Green Mountain State has a granite spine that rises, pushing hemlock and hop hornbeam forests high to blue sky. This backbone of rock snakes south to north, extending rib ridges east and west. In winter the mountains are snuggled in deep snow, which flattens and disappears in the spring melt. Then summer rains pour down and down, their waters pausing to pool or hurry and fall again before landing in Lake Champlain or the Connecticut River and running onward to the Atlantic Ocean. Water. Water to turn saw blades, spin bobbins, or move millstones; water to freeze and then run again; water for mud and trout, for hay and horses, for thirsty maples to drip back as sap; water to squeeze through aquifer sieves and bubble up again for drinking. I was raised near springs. In back of Watson’s cabin in the Ozarks, covered with rusty corrugate, there was a dark, shaded corner, a bottomless pool, cool, a secret place where, using my hand as a ladle, I could scoop crisp sips of endless refreshment to my mouth. It is only right that I should return to a place with springs.
And coming here was more than a search to quench thirst; it was indeed travel to a source, a place closer to nourishment for soul and mouth. We found this home in the mountains not far from the bakery in Norwich, Vermont. If you live here and are not on a hill you are certainly near one, as this state is second only to Washington in a count of peaks per square mile. We unfurled easily, like a flag built to catch wind and whip. We spread out, stretching and marveling as the kids banged out the door to play in the dirt. Good, clean dirt. No needles, no trash, no broken glass or excrement. “Are the kids outside?” “Yes.” “Can you see them?” “Yes.” “OK.”
If my heart had been wounded, if worry was my steady companion, and if my chest ached not with passion but with stress, in the days between my work in the city and my new profession a lightness returned. Anxiety sloughed off and healing began underneath. I was starting over, newish and shinier, brighter, more present, a better father, a better spouse, a better human. It was also a time to prepare, to recharge and store energy for the task ahead, just around the corner.
As it turns out, baking is a nighttime trade. I like to pretend that work begins in the early morning but will acknowledge that we commute under stars well before the coldest hours of night arrive. I have my first coffee just after 3:00 a.m. while you snore; and I eat pizza for “lunch” while your breakfast scramble sizzles. The very first morning of my baking life, the alarm sounded, ending a sleepless night of twisting, fueled by fear of oversleeping. I shuffled through the house, trying not to wake anyone, dressed, grabbed my lunch, and ducked out the door with groggy eyes and a nervous stomach. New shirt, new shoes, new baker’s pants, new life.
I arrived at the bakery and stepped into the bright, warm space, thick with the smell and steam of baking bread. Crews were already in motion, doing their daily work. This wasn’t my ritual yet. Farmers know their seasons and the chores of each, as do ranchers and mechanics. Bakers know their days by the order of mixes and bakes. Me? I arrived knowing nothing.
At King Arthur Flour the bakery building is divided into separate clusters for bread and pastry work. The two disciplines have things in common but also individual needs, best served by grouping respective production areas into pods. For bread, the main tools include a steam-injected masonry oven, which can bake a few hundred baguettes at a time. Bakers fill these ovens using a large canvas loader, which looks like a hospital stretcher and deposits loaves directly onto the hearth of the oven. There are also mixers designed for artisan dough and wooden benches where hand shaping is done. And hands, experienced hands, the most flexible, versatile, and valuable tools in the world.
I was hired as a bread baker, so I gave a friendly wave to the pastry team as I passed by that first day, and headed to the bread area, where Sharon, the mixer, and Amber, the baker, were already hard at work. Sharon and Amber were working with an intern from the Culinary Institute of America, who was spending sixteen weeks at King Arthur in fulfillment of his academic requirement.
After advising me in her no-nonsense way that I needed to arrive earlier the following day, Sharon lifted me high above her head and threw me into the proverbial deep end of the pool, pointing to a board of dough blobs. “Shape some baguettes!” I gulped, stepped to the bench, grasped at my straws of knowledge for guidance, and nervously began.
The truth is, even if she had said, “Shape these boules” or “Shape those bâtards” or “Let’s round rolls,” she might as well have said, “Make a sugar sculpture!” Even with my best effort I was splashing within seconds, sucking water through my nose, coughing and flapping. Someone call a lifeguard! He’s drowning! And I was. I was so bad that even the intern began throwing tips and bailing water as I waited for the call: Mayday! All hands on deck to help the career-changer suck less! I was so frustrated that I quickly soaked myself with the sweat of nerves, sadly watching as the secret got out. With shaping there is no hiding. Either one makes something beautiful, smooth, even, and symmetrical—or not. A piece of dough is a blank canvas that the hands transform. Skills are either apparent or not—there is no faking or copying. Yes, I had studied. I understood the science of baking—intellectually, I knew how to shape loaves—but craft and beauty lie in nuance. The micro-adjustments made by experienced hands that apply pressure here or delicacy there—such knowledge and skill come only with time and repetitions. It is here, in these details, that the novice is separated from the professional. With everything we did in the bakery I was in this beginner space . . . and this was the hardest part of the transition. I was at the bottom of the ladder, the lowest rung. If this team was a chain, then I was the link that would fail first. Welcome to humble pie bakery.
So, thank goodness for oatmeal bread. If shaping French bâtards was a dough-ripping nightmare, if my baguettes looked like snakes that had swallowed eggs, then I could take comfort here. Quickly shaping these pan loaves and rolling them across a moist towel, then through a pile of thick-cut rolled oats, was the first bakery dance I could do. My oatmeal loaf was “almost” indistinguishable from a professional’s after I’d undergone only a few weeks of constant embarrassment. I will admit it is a low bar, but even tripping and falling, I could clear it.