Chapter 20: THE BREAD
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
Aban follows El into his kitchen, where he gathers together fresh yeast, sugar, a cup of water, flour, butter, eggs, and salt on his counter. He begins.
“Have you baked bread before Aban?” he asks, as he heats up the water briefly in the microwave.
“No.”
“Today, you will learn. Pay attention.”
“Why? I don’t wanna learn.”
El begins teaching. “I will make it easy for you. I often make bread using my mother dough, but today, for you, I will use a basic recipe. First you must proof the yeast. Do you know what yeast is?”
“No.”
El clicks his tongue. He removes the cup of water from the microwave, pours it into a bowl, and crumbles the block of yeast into it. He says, “It is a life form.”
“Ewww.”
El stops and looks at her, “There’s no ewww about it. You eat life forms when you eat meat. You eat life forms when you eat cheese. You even eat life forms when you eat vegetables.”
“I don’t eat that kind of cheese, and vegetables are plants, you know.”
El sets the bowl aside and turns fully towards her, “Your ignorance is astounding.”
“I’m not ignorant.”
“No, you won’t be after I finish teaching you.”
“I don’t need any teaching. I went to school, you know. And I graduated.”
El doesn’t reply but resumes, “The yeast likes to grow –”
“Plants aren’t animals.”
“No, they are not Aban, but animals aren’t just the ones you can see. Animals include life that you cannot see. Bacteria and smaller organisms live in the soil and in the growing season crawl into some vegetables. You cannot get them out of the vegetables’ crannies when washing the soil off. Even a scrubbing may not be enough. And so whether you know it or not – and you have not until today – you eat them when you eat some plant life.”
El laughs as a look of revulsion grows on Aban’s face. Her mouth opens. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“No, never at you. Humour lightens life Aban.” El grins then returns to his work. “Yeast is a micro-organism. It is life, and it feeds on sugar and likes warmth, just as we like warmth and feed on it. You must give it what it needs for it to grow else it will remain as a cake, useless to anyone even to itself. You want the yeast to grow so that it will leaven the whole bread and will be in every morsel you eat. But beware: you must have good yeast. You can try and try but you will not have perfectly leavened bread if you use bad yeast. And if you overfeed it, the bread will grow so much it will be yeasty in flavour and again be bad.” El pauses and asks, “Are you listening?”
“Yeah,” Aban replies.
El nods and continues, “Handling the yeast takes patience, knowledge, and experience to ensure it leavens the bread well. Breadmaking takes practice. You cannot have a good loaf every time if you make bread only here and there. Sometimes you will use too much yeast; sometimes not enough; and sometimes if you wait too long before you bake the risen loaf, your yeast will become useless even with sugar and warmth.”
“Okay,” Aban says.
“Okay?”
Aban shrugs, her eyes sliding away from his.
YOU ARE READING
Aban's Accension
SpiritualCoddled and controlled, living a sheltered life with her parents in small-town Ontario, Aban receives a surprising letter one day: Her grandmother has left her her entire estate, including a house in Toronto with a mysterious male tenant. In a spurt...
