A letter to my baker

Photo by Hamide Jafari on Unsplash

I understand the bakery has a thousand-year lease. Actually, the notarized papers read, “as long as time endures,” but I can’t open my mouth that wide. At any rate, it appears the bread will continue uninterrupted. I appreciate that.

Your quality is incomparable. Your location makes me loyal for life. But you could make it a bit easier to work with you. The inability to pre-order is infuriating. Your commitment to a zero-preservative recipe is exasperating. You realize – you are a hard-working baker, surely you realize – how inconvenient it is to report to your counter every morning? I have laundry to do and emails to answer. I have other stores to visit. Maybe I can help you research all-natural stabilizers that will make these loaves last at least two days?

It's not that I dislike coming here. This floury kitchen smells like morning. You smile at me, with confectioner’s sugar on your apron. You put a parcel as warm as a newborn in my arms. Some days you’ll shimmer it with egg wash, or braid in rosemary and thyme. I’ve found chocolate chips at the center of dense brown bread, and streusel on the bottom – the last bite! – of whole wheat.

But that’s the problem. You have no menu, and you take no orders. The bread will be what the bread will be; you are the baker. I can’t go without it, but I don’t have any say in it. You realize – you must get hungry, surely you realize – that this is not the best strategy for customer retention? We expect options. Our palates have personality. Your take-it-or-leave-it toast feels like a gamble.

Still, I can’t leave it. Have you tasted the bread elsewhere? I know you have. At times I’ve seen you, disguised under a hoodie or a floppy beret, checking out the competition. You always leave a loaf, with a ribbon and a note. What does it say?

Where do you get these recipes? I’m partial to your pumpernickel, chewy enough to convince me that my words matter. I would like to fill my freezer with the frothy strawberry eclairs, which taste like I may still be pretty at forty-two. That babka is cinnamon Buddhism, swirled with the nutmeg of now. I wish you’d make more of that sunflower loaf, all nutty with health and vigor.

But did you taste-test those turgid bagels? Come on now. Human teeth can barely break in. I wake up hungry, and then it takes me until three in the afternoon to find sustenance. Yes, it comes. Yes, those rigid rings are filling, finally. But do you realize – I think you must not realize – that a girl can get scared when she’s hungry? Maybe you’ve never had “tummy issues.” I don’t mean to get personal, but an empty belly belches out some barmy stuff.

Then there are the big plastic bags of crumbs. It’s a good thing you don’t charge, because no one would pay for these. And talk about timing. The very morning when I’m worried about my job security or my osteopenia or the fact that I need my mother to live as long as time endures, you give me a duffle bag of dust. Yes, it’s edible. No, I don’t die of hunger. Yes, the bottom of the bag always has a few weird cubes soaked in wine. (I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not. Sometimes it burns my throat. Sometimes it helps me sleep.)

Still, I keep coming back. Where else could I go? You have never actually let me down. You realize – I know you realize – that you’re the only one I can say that about. I can’t say it about me. I can’t even say it about my mother, who is more like you than anyone I’ve met. Sometimes her muffins burn.

You keep feeding me. You smile in my eyes when I peek in the bag and scowl. You do this even when I storm into the bakery and tell the other patrons that I’m done. There have been unyeasted days when I’ve swept your jars of seeds to the floor. I tell everyone that this is it. I’m fed up. I leave empty-handed. I leave you in the doorway, holding out your loaf.

The whole way home, even though it’s winter – this always happens in winter – there are sunflowers. And there on my doorstep, wrapped like an orphan, is daily bread.

I don’t know how you outrun me.

I expect to distrust you again. I distrust you now. Do you mean to tell me that I will be able to do my work tomorrow, even though I cut the crusts off my creativity today? Do you expect me to believe that I will get through grief that does not yet exist? Am I supposed to trust that you will cater the dinner party and the first date and the last minute?

I can’t stay away. I will see you tomorrow morning.