Matins (F)

Locals would call it the long way round when Laura Esposito goes into town to begin the day’s work. She rises at 1:00, and after a warm slow shower, she dresses, drinks two cups of Folgers coffee, black, and eats a thick slice of ham set between two slices of yesterday’s bread. She puts down food and water for the cats, and grabbing her purse and phone, locks the front door behind her.

Leaving her subdivision she turns right rather than left so that her route takes her to Railroad Avenue. By turning right at that intersection where the new warehouses now stand, Laura drives along a two-lane road that parallels the central tracks that run west from the port and through a three-mile stretch of pine forest with 40 and 60-foot trees still unlogged. During the afternoon drive home, the flickering sunlight and shadows often make her drowsy and so she sings out loud with the radio to keep herself awake.

Reaching the end of Railroad Avenue, Laura once more turns right instead of left and crosses the tracks, travels past a scattering of shacks long since abandoned, and then she comes to a road that forks back towards town but passes first through the middle of the 40-acre Morning Glory farm, three small barns and feeders and cows on the left; the family home, a caretaker’s cottage, a larger barn with a newly painted tin roof, and horses on the right. 

The shop—which is what she calls the bakery as did her parents—sits behind the newly remodeled Garrison Realty building on Lake Street. The two businesses share a rear wall, and so Laura must park around on the side opposite from 3^rd Avenue next to a 60-year-old magnolia. When she closes the service door and enters the shop, the store clock reads 2:05.

Louie and Peter are setting out the dough in buckets they have prepared for her during the night, and Laura with a quick nod to the men, takes her white apron from the back of her stool—she remembers afternoons, her grandfather sitting on that stool, she in his lap as he firmly dimpled the dough before refolding it before the last rest period.

With a deft shake of her hand, she scatters a nearly solid layer of flour across the bread table, and then lets the first lump of sticky dough roll out of its bucket onto the hard surface. Quickly she massages it into a 10 x 4 rectangular shape, but not too perfectly so that the rustic style of the ciabatta will be maintained. She moves the loaf to the rack behind her, and Louie covers the dough again.

Again, a dusting of flour, and a second lump eased out onto the table. Now her hands are moving with a more certain intent and the second loaf is loaded. The third and fourth and fifth loaves are done rhythmically, and,  settled into the task at hand, Laura works through the buckets of dough. After resting two hours the 40 loaves will be ready for the oven that has been heating.

Peter rolls the rack over to the oven he has been tending, and at 6:00 ten loaves are placed in a semicircle around the burning wood in the 450 degree oven. He rotates the loaves every 10 minutes, sprinkling the tops and sides with water so that the crust thickens. The first batch comes out of the oven at 6:25 and the loaves are loaded onto the cooling racks. 

In this fashion, then, is the daily bread of Laura’s father and his father’s father and his father’s father made. Ladson 2014