Page 7 of The Golden Spoon
“We expect good rises and perfect bakes on these,” Archie continues. “Bread can be tricky so stay vigilant.”
I focus on the pantry doors to the side of the tent, already planning what I will need.
“Ready… set…”
One more deep breath.You’ve got this, Hannah.
“Bake!”
I take off, running to the pantry, filling my arms with flour, sugar, packets of yeast, and dumping them on top of my baking station. Bread is hard to get just right. It’s fussy. I fumble at first, dropping my measuring cups and spilling flour all over the table. Next, I grab an egg from the refrigerator, and it cracks on the floor. I laugh to cover my embarrassment as the cameras rush to film my first mishap. Gettingused to them watching and recording everything is going to be a challenge.You can do this, Hannah. You have to.
I start mixing my dough, finally getting into the rhythm of it as if I were at home. When I am in the process of baking, I go to another place. It’s the only time I feel this way. Most of the time I am full of self-doubt and self-criticism. But when I’m baking something, I get so involved in whatever it is that I’m making that I disappear into it. The experience feels almost divine, the kind of thing they talk about at church. It’s to the point that if I don’t get to this place, if I don’t feel this feeling, I know that whatever I’m making won’t taste as good.
For the sweet bread, I’ve already decided that I’ll be baking a spiced cinnamon roll with chai-flavored icing. I’ve made this one at least a dozen times in the past few months, enough that Ben, who usually can’t get enough of my sweets, was literally holding his hands up in surrender, begging for me to take mercy on him when I brought the last few tries out to the kitchen table.
Instead, I took the extra rolls to my mom and her sister and to our next-door neighbors, who agreed they were exceptional, even if most of them had never heard of chai. Now my hands move almost on their own, mixing the dough on the countertop. I like to use my fingers instead of the mixer so I can gauge the texture. You don’t want your dough too dry or too sticky. There’s a perfect consistency that I can find only if I go by touch. I place the first batch of dough on a shelf inside the baby-blue Smeg refrigerator by my baking table. I wipe my fingers on my apron and allow myself a quick break to look around the tent at my competition. Across from me, Gerald has also already put his doughs in the refrigerator to chill. He’ll be a challenge in this competition, I can already tell. He is as detail oriented as I am and probably twice as organized. He works at mixing something, his face intense with focus above the bow tie of his suit. At tables behind me, Stella and Lottie are still mixing their dough. It looks like Lottie’s is sticking to her hands, which is never a good sign. I remind myself that this is a competition, and I’d be doing myself no favors by trying tohelp anyone out. Stella shapes her dough into a ragged lump on the next table over. Her face is flushed and smeared with flour. She looks up, making eye contact with me, and I break away, turning back to my own table as though I’ve just been caught cheating on a test. When I swing back around, Archie Morris is standing in front of my table. He has snuck up on me while my back was turned and is surrounded by cameras.
“Hello there, young lady! How are you feeling about your first bake?”
It’s crazy being so close to a celebrity. The legendary Archie Morris. My mom used to watch him every night onThe Cutting Board. She was over the moon when they announced he was going to be the new cohost this season.
“He’s so sexy,” she’d said back in Minnesota, taking a bite of a butterscotch bar I was testing. “It’ll do that Betsy woman some good. She could use some new life in that tent with her. Someone a bit fresher.” Mom licked her lips, and I couldn’t tell if it was to clear off crumbs or to show her appreciation for Archie Morris. Either way, it was disgusting.
“Betsy Martin is a star, Mom,” I’d replied. Mom is nothing if not exasperating. She has always been harder on women. I think it was how she was raised.
“Take these away from me or I’ll get fat,” she said, pushing the pan across the table, but she made no move to stop eating.
“You know I almost met Archie Morris once.” I’d turned back to the counter, rolling my eyes at the story I’d heard at least fifty times already. “I was in a pageant in Tucson, and he was staying at the same hotel as me. I heard from some of the other girls that he was in the bar, but once we got there, he was already gone. Spent too long putting on my makeup. That’s why I have the makeup tattoos now! Now I’ll never have to miss another celebrity sighting because I am too busy putting on my lip liner!”
And now Archie Morris is standing directly in front of me, lookingat me with those huge emerald eyes and asking about my baking. He’s so close, I can smell his cologne. It’s nothing like the sharp body spray Ben puts on before work when he’s too lazy to shower. Archie smells expensive, clean, and masculine, like leather and pine sap.
His head is backlit, surrounded in a halo of light like the saints on the stained-glass windows at our church. His eyes twinkle, inviting me to speak. He must have asked me something, but I don’t hear him. The lights are hot on my face. My brain grasps for something to say. I remember what I’ve practiced alone in the kitchen for ten years now, and I inhale sharply, forcing myself to snap out of it. Angling my best side toward the cameras, I put on my most dazzling smile, the one I hope everyone will like.
“Hi, Archie.” I beam. “I’m just so happy to be here.”
PRADYUMNA
Bread happens to be my specialty, so I’m elated. I get straight to work preparing my yeast, mixing it with a splash of milk and warming it in a pan as an image of a Swedish cardamom twist comes into my head. With its elaborate plaiting, it’s like a cinnamon roll but more complex. I love a bread tied in knots. I’ll make mine savory. That will be interesting. I turn off the burner and rush to my designated sage-green refrigerator on the side of the tent. It’s stocked to the brim, stuffed full of fresh produce, exotic fruits, and dairy from local farms. I get to work sorting through my options. What is this? Spring onion? No, chives. That’ll be perfect. I’ll dice them and mix them with olive oil, so they crisp up in the cracks of the bread, along with some mature cheddar. I dig deeper in the dairy compartment and find a log of expensive goat cheese. Even better! Then I’ll add a ton of fresh-ground black pepper and top with some flaky sea salt. My mouth is already watering. Pair a few of these freshly baked buns with a crisp, minerally white and aperitivo is served!
This is by far my favorite part of baking, watching the ideas form in my mind. I’m not a planner—all the meticulous plotting, the playing out of different scenarios—what a drag. I make up for my inability to think ahead by being good on the fly. I think I need a bit of pressure to create.
For my sweet bread, I’ll start a dough and get it rising so I can think about it more once I’ve had a break. I work energetically, adding flour to the yeast in the stand mixer, cracking in eggs, a plop of some room temperature butter, sugar, and a generous pinch of salt. I’m not as by the book as most bakers. I think that sometimes too much strict methodology can get you in trouble when it’s better to rely at least a bit on instinct. Baking is like playing jazz—once you have the basics down, sometimes it’s better to improvise.
Once I have my sweet bread dough in the proofing drawer, I set to work on my bread dough. I watch with satisfaction as it turns from a shaggy lump into something taut and shiny in the mixer. It will need to chill in the fridge before I shape it into knots. It’s hot and humid today, which means it’s best to let your batter rest for a bit. With my two basic doughs resting and chilling—two of my personal favorite states as well—I take a momentary break.
I wipe my hands on a cloth, tossing it over my shoulder. While I have a sip of water I look around at the others.
Peter is referring to the blueprint he’s created as his stand mixer spins wildly next to him. His forehead is damp with anxiety.
In front of me, Stella, whisps of her hair coming loose from the bun on top of her head, aggressively kneads a lump of dough, working it on her counter with expert wrist flips. She attempts unsuccessfully to blow a stray piece of hair from her face. It sticks to her cheek instead, and I’m tempted to go over to her and smooth it. I look away before my thoughts get the better of me.
Melanie is standing along the side of the tent whispering to one of the camera operators, the one with the dark beard. I was surprised to see her when I arrived at Grafton. I don’t know why exactly. I suppose I figured her role was less substantial, less hands-on. But she seems to be the control center ofBake Week, rushing around in tailored pants and a fitted shirt, an earpiece pressed to one ear. She points a manicured finger at Lottie, whose bread is being pulled out of the proving tray, and the camera guy rushes past me. Her eyesscan the room, looking for other opportunities. It was Melanie who chose me.
I tried out forBake Weekas a bit of a joke. Well, maybe not a joke, but I applied the same sense of whatever will be, will be to the application as I do to pretty much all aspects of my life these days. I filled out the forms honestly, telling them that baking was one of the great joys in my life but that I have never had any sort of professional aspirations about the whole thing. I look at baking as a leisure sport, the same way one might look at sailing—something you want to do as a hobby. Nothing you want to be responsible for when it comes to other people’s well-being.
I was clear about that in my application video. Clear that I don’t need to bake, that I do it for the fun of it. I don’t need to do anything really, which is part of my problem. I haven’t since I sold Spacer to a billionaire tech investor in 2013. It was a start-up, a service that helped people find open parking spaces. I’d done it on a lark, just a lame idea I’d had that I was telling people about to liven up the conversation at some boring party one day, but a friend from Stanford had overheard and thought it was a good idea. So he’d set up a meeting with some of his investor friends. They’d loved my pitch, and soon enough I was a full-fledged company with a staff of thirty and the buzz surrounding a booming tech sector full of eager hangers-on. When an investment firm swooped in with an offer, I hadn’t even flinched. I sold it immediately for a whopping $14 million. Principles be damned. I knew that there was no way something so simple, so stupid frankly, would stand the test of time. Though I had some regret when I told my staff. All were brand-new to the company, all still sold on the lines I’d spoon-fed them about office culture and being part of something biggerblahblah. Spacer was not something bigger, though. We weren’t changing the world one parking space at a time, and anyone half conscious could see that. It was a flash in the pan. And if a big company was dumb enough to want to gobble it up while it was still palatable, well then, I was not about to stand in their way.
With so much money in the bank, and investments piling up in a tailor-made portfolio, I was able to just coast, so that’s exactly what I did. I took up golf, sailing, and baking. I don’t know what exactly drew me to baking. I think I’d always enjoyed making things, showing off when I invited people over for dinner parties. Baking made me seem domestic and accessible, things that are impressive to women. Up until recently, most of my life has been about impressing women. And it just so happened that I found all the kneading and mixing extremely relaxing, an added bonus.
