The belt on the old washer choked out comical groans, filling the house with something other than my sobs. When my grandmother passed away, my grandfather told me he would clap his hands just to hear a sound. I now knew what he meant. I was living in the loudest silence. I began building fires in the oven, even when I wasn’t preparing it for baking. It was my way of sending out signals to whatever angels and ancestors might be watching. One morning I glanced up, peering through the multiple windows in the house and through the bakery to look directly into the oven chamber, catching the distant glow of a flame. I knew I had to bake my way out.
I clung to routine as I elevated my bread making from a side gig to my primary source of income. On a stretch of butcher block paper, I wrote the days of the week, and underneath each day I listed the theme and specific duties. Monday: office work. Tuesday: bread mix and oven firing. Wednesday: baking and delivery. Thursday: yard chores and chopping wood. Friday: set up for workshops. Weekend: teaching. Wake up at 5 A.M. Respond to e-mails. No work past 6 P.M. Drink water. Take walks. I taped the sheet to a barren living room wall—it fluttered and echoed in the empty house.
Spring arrived, violent after the starkness of winter. Watercress, dandelions, and chickweed popped up along the creek. Daffodils sprouted and bobbed their yellow heads under the poplar trees. Violets covered the lawn in a tie dye of purple and white. I planted a modest garden mostly of herbs, with the addition of kale, collards, and chard. Snow melted and turned into puddles. Puddles grew tadpoles. The patch of nettles stood tall and foreboding, and rushes of heat in the afternoon warned of summer. Inside the house, there was still a fire at night to take off the chill. The apple trees budded; their vibrant pink blossoms teeming with bees were almost obscene. Everywhere, the crust of winter was splitting open.
On a scarred round of oak, surrounded by sawdust, the start of an 800-degree fire begins. The chopping block is a liminal zone, both a state of mind and an actual place, without which entire rhythms here would cease. Splitting wood, you’re neither here nor there. The focus it demands is simultaneously relaxed and poised. You step up to it. You step into it. A basic level of respect must exist between the axe, you, and the wood.
Find a chopping block suitable to your height. Position a log on the block. Step back and look at where you want the blade to land. Lift the axe in both hands, one near the head, the other toward the end of the handle. Hoist over your shoulder so the blade is facing out and the handle is in the air parallel to your ear. The hand near the blade guides the axe. The hand at the bottom is a hinge point. Lower your center of gravity and push off into the swing, pulling the tail of the handle toward your waist and driving the blade into the point you are focused on, allowing your guiding hand to slide down the length of the handle as you swing. To properly split a log, you must look through it.
Gathered from several sources, the wood for the oven isn’t split, just the kindling. First, there are Mike and Ruth Anne, who run a nearby sawmill. They deliver pine and poplar skins by the dump-truck load. Mike worked in a bakery as a kid filling cream horns. He always asks if I make them. “No,” I always reply. “Good,” he huffs. He hated that job. Then there are scraps of hardwood from a furniture shop in Athens, Georgia. Tom delivers it in the back of his white truck when he comes to Asheville. We have tea and catch up on life. The wood is kiln dried and light as a feather, splintering if you look at it hard enough. Last, Toby, who lives down the way, brings a mix of seasoned cordwood. I reserve a portion for feeding the oven in the middle of the night. His off-kilter sense of humor is legendary. One day, while tossing logs from his pickup, I told him I had a rash on my arm that made me nervous. He said I might be dying. I thought I was.
I load crosshatched slabs of sawmill wood into a warm oven after a bake cycle is through. A log cabin arrangement of hardwood kindling is constructed two feet into the chamber, touching the drying slabs. Filled with crumpled newspaper, the lay fire is lit, catching the wood immediately behind it. This point of contact is critical. In time the fire spreads, creating a wall of flame. If the chamber is left open, it takes six hours for the fire to burn from the front to the back. Over time, blue flames replace the bright yellow ones and the gases in the air ignite and slither like red northern lights. The fire is conversational. Hissing, popping, bursting. And then quiet, almost ghostly, nothing more than crispy, metallic tings.
Along with the kind of wood used, the rate of oxygen delivered to the fire determines burn time, temperature, and heat quality. On each side of the oven mouth rest four fire bricks left over from the building of the hearth. Fire bricks are porous, expanding and contracting in fluctuating temperatures without cracking. Once the initial fire has been set and is steadily roaring, the bricks are placed in the doorway, leaving a space in the middle like a gap tooth. Slowing the fire down in the evening leaves a good chance for sleep, although I’m always half awake on bake nights.
To the left of the oven is a covered wood bay. The driest wood lives here and is accessible from the side and the back. In front of the wood bay, attached to weathered posts and beams, is a scrap of plywood that makes up a prep table. Above the oven lives a sheet pan lined with rags I use for steaming while baking bread. A chimney sweep. A long metal rake. A peel and a mop make up the rest of the tools scattered around. Overseeing the makeshift bread chapel is a porcelain Dutch girl, a bundle of lavender covered in soot, and a rusty horseshoe hopefully pointed in the direction that brings good luck.
On the posts framing the oven various trinkets hang. Cast-iron pans. Pruners. A mobile with only two bells in the shape of a crescent moon. A metal spoon so covered in mold it blends in with the smoke-blackened wood. Horsehair brushes with singed bristles for sweeping away debris. A pot where a salty, stiff pair of gardening gloves rests. And the waffle irons. Because I wasn’t going to eat pancakes anymore.
Campfire waffle irons work best on a thriving coal base. Prepare the waffle batter while the fire gets going. Heat the iron on a portion of hot coals. Open the skillet and drop in a pat of butter. If it sizzles and bubbles, you’re in the right temperature zone. Make sure the area you are building your fire in is free of flammables and a safe distance from any structures. Use a shovel to even out the ground.
Gather tinder, kindling, and fuel. Tinder: pencil-sized sticks. Kindling: branches as thick as the thumb. Fuel: wood the circumference of your wrist. A few handfuls of tinder, an armload of kindling, and a knee-high stack of fuel will provide enough wood for a nice long morning or evening of waffle making. Although once the fire is established, it can burn wet wood, the tinder, and kindling you start out with must be completely dry.
Lay two pieces of kindling parallel to each other. Place five to six sheets of loosely crumpled newspaper between them. On top of this base, stack ample tinder and a few pieces of kindling in a Lincoln Logs structure. Ignite the newspaper. Once the wood has caught, replenish with kindling as needed. Load on fuel when it’s active and burning well.
When done with the fire, use the shovel to break apart any burning bits and coals. Spread out the ashes, pat them down, and pour a pail of water over the pit.