A baker’s guide to surviving the pandemic
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- April 6, 2020
- 1091
I decided to bake bread. I’ll have some beautiful loaves to toast in the morning or with afternoon coffee, I reasoned, butter and jam spread thick like a warm blanket.
I measured and sifted, adding a fresh packet of yeast, then kneaded properly, not too heavy-handedly. I set it inside a greased bowl and let it rise, higher and higher until it quivered as I lifted the tea towel to punch down and rise again. It was beautiful, perfectly risen, as I carefully divided it into two sections, the gases releasing with a quiet whoosh. I placed the dough inside two metal bread pans, carefully shaping into perfect ovals, and I looked down on them with satisfaction. I placed them inside my already heated oven and waited.
When I pulled them out after the allotted bake time on the recipe I had used from the More with Less cookbook, my mouth was salivating at the thought of butter melting into my first piece. But the dream was over, as all my bread-baking escapades go — the bread was a hard yet doughy mess. I have finally given up my dream of being like Peeta in “Hunger Games,” who by the way was the most realistic part of that dystopian future. My pandemic quarantine will not include fresh bread baked by me, although I want to thank my neighbor who had no idea of my sadness and hung a fresh loaf on my door handle last evening. I nearly wept.
I’ve been cooking steadily for two weeks now. We’ve picked up several to-go meals from local businesses, but for the first time in a long time, I haven’t minded whipping up savory soups and simple recipes.
I had reached a place the past several years that I felt done with cooking. It didn’t mean I had stopped, but I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. It felt like a drag, a chore, and I couldn’t pull one innovative recipe from my brain. Aside from baking bread, I am a good baker, so I’ve never stopped baking cookies and cakes, and sometimes a delicious pie or pudding. My husband regularly asks if I can make him flan, so there is often a small pan of that Mexican custard in our refrigerator.
But with the chaos of illness and the soft settling of unease over our landscape, the completeness of cooking nurturing meals has revived me. Is it the drive to nest in times of uncertainty?
I bought supplies, never overbuying, but enough that I wouldn’t have to go out twice a week. I have created spinach quiche, spaghetti and big meatballs, delicious chunky chili, Mom’s tuna noodle casserole, a succulent pot roast with veggies, steak enchiladas, as well as breakfast tacos that I froze. I’ve baked chocolate-chip cheesecake, stirred together a flan and layered a strawberry Jello cake. On my list is baking some shortbread to go with coffee and my favorite — chocolate cream pie.
We don’t need all these extra desserts, just like I don’t need that extra can of coffee I have tucked away in the pantry, but when the day feels precarious, it’s nice to know it’s there. Easter will be held in pajamas this year, and I’ll need to make sure I have all the ingredients to assemble the chocolate torte I always bring. It’s comfort food that spreads ease to these days that are different, sometimes unfocused, feeling like a blur that ends with the question, “When will this end?”
There is no bright lining to this pandemic. It’s a reminder we are never, ever in charge. It’s an event that will alter us in many ways: how we interact with people, what remained important and how much excess we don’t need.
What we can do is try (and fail) to bake bread, express our fears, eat nourishing meals with those we love, allow the gift of crying and get in touch with family we often don’t talk to enough. Because scattering words of love and sadness and encouragement and rage allow us to feel emotions instead of pressing them down.
There is no room for endless false positivity and the glossing over of anguish, and I become weary of the attempt. As the world writhes in pain, we must remember each other’s humanity, tending to it carefully.