The Baker - Short Story

It is Sunday early in the morning and he is already downstairs, the shop already smells like baked chocolate chip cookies. When he finished the slow process of measuring, sifting, and stirring, the dough rises in the oven and the house becomes saturated with the scents of butter and flour and chocolate. 

As the process is almost ready, he starts washing and cleaning the equipments he has just used, leaving everything in the kitchen shiny and tidy. 

The cookies are ready, he takes them out and put them on the marble table. As he waits for them to cool down, he starts making a list of the supplies he needs to buy that day. He checks the huge fridge and the cupboards, making sure he didn't forget to write down anything that is missing. Once the cookies are cool enough, he puts them in a small container, gets the shopping list and goes outside. 

His shop is at the far end of a peaceful street not very close from downtown. Despite the time, movement can be already seen on the street, people going out shopping even so early, stores and markets opening their doors to the regular customers. He greets a couple of people as he walks down the road, and they greet him back. His family has lived in that city for many years, and he is well known. 

He walks a few more blocks and he turns left at the corner where the greengrocer. It is a narrow, shady dead-end street. There are wet boxes and trash on both sides. The fabric that worked as a roof for the street is punctured, barely able to restrain the rain that so often hits the town, soaking unprepared folks. 

At the end of the dead-end street there is something that could be called a house, made of wooden plank, cloth and cardboard. There is no door or windows. He knees down and leaves the container with the cookies at the entrance of it and walks away, like he does every day. He never stays to see the arm stretching out of the darkness to reach the container and quickly take it inside. 

On his way back to the bakery he stops at the street market for fruits. He buys apples, blueberries, strawberries and cherries. Just a few of each of them for a new receipt he wants to try. Leaving the market, he walks back to the shop, as the yellow shining sun starts to rise from the ground, filling the sky with mighty colors of red and splashing the clouds with endless rays of pink. It was bright and mesmerizing, inviting him to stare, deep into the horizon. And he does. 

He opens the back door of his shop and steps into the cool and quiet of the place. He soaked the fruits he'd just bought in water and put the plastic bags away. Once everything is in place, he starts working.  

The wood-fired oven opens directly into the storefront of the bakery, and he starts heating it. He takes wheelbarrow loads of large logs from a trailer behind the shop and feeds the fire underneath the ovens, putting the loads of wood on the fire and leaving the hatch open to allow oxygen to get to the fire. The nice atmospheric crackling of the burning wood in the background was something that he had always find so peaceful, and he liked to work hearing the sound of it. He takes the dough that had been prepared the previous day and begins working on it. 

He mixes some olives into the baguette dough and it was quickly shaped into an olive baguette. Then he focus on the brioche dough that had been mixing away for some time. He picks up the dough and makes different braids in the brioches. He created beautiful designs with the brioche dough. He brushes the tops of the brioche with butter and sprinkled the tops with handfuls of sugar.  

He grabs some pastry dough. He keeps rolling butter into the dough and folding the dough to create layers in the final pastry. The results of all that mixing will be a cake rich in flavor, nicely moist. He keeps  on baking non-stop. 

Then he starts cleaning the counter, organizing carefully the selection of breads, pastries and rolls he had chosen for the day. By nine o'clock, the place is already filled with different sorts of breads. There were bagels, baguettes, brioches and ciabatta, they all looked so tasty. Some were browned and slightly flaky, with the inside soft and light. Some had a creaminess and graininess interior. The bread made with organic wheat had a slightly coarser texture, though it was also appealing, having a sort of rustic character to it. And there was also the simple, normal bread. Though simple, it was delicious, and he valued making a bread with organic ingredients that has been rooted in family tradition for years.  

As the hours passed by, more and more customers came to the shop, queued at the entrance of it, attracted by the smell of freshly made bread. He serves them all, always with a smile on his face, always satisfied to see the clients leaving his store happy. He devoted his time to making people happy. 

Time passes by very fast that Sunday, and when he finally sits down to rest, it was already past five. He observes the shelves of bread and the counter, once filled with many types of delicious and fresh bread, now nearly empty. He had worked really hard on that day baking, like he always does, and the feeling of satisfaction was all over him. He was tired, but joyful nonetheless. But his day was not over yet. 

He heard the door opening and closing, and got up from his chair to see a little girl entering the shop. She was around eight years old, he guessed, and she was very beautiful. She had long, wavy blonde hair tied up to a ponytail and curious blue eyes. She was wearing a red dress and holding a small handbag. She looked lovely.  

He noticed she was alone and asked about her parents, worrying she might have gotten lost. He had never seen that girl before, and it was a small town, tourists coming to it eventually. Maybe their parents were also tourists, visiting for the first place. She didn't have time to answer the questions, for the door of the shop opened once again and a couple came in. And he immediately knew those were her parents. 

 The man had short brown hair, a rectangular face with a defined, slightly pointed chin and a sturdy jaw line. His eyes, also brown, looked worried. The woman's blonde hair hung straight down into an angular cut at her jaw. She was also beautiful, and had the same eyes as the little girl's. 

The girl did not take her eyes off from the counter as her father was telling her how she was not supposed to leave their side without telling them. It seemed as if it were not the first time the little girl wandered away from her parents, leaving them behind worried looking for her, and he guessed it was not going to be the last one. 

Then, when the father suggest they leave and return to their walking around the town, both mother and daughter pointed at the cakes and bread left in the counter, the same expression in their faces. The father looked at it and his expression softened, and he asked for some bread. The baker made suggestions and they chatted a little as he got the goods from the counter. 

They bought a cake and bread, mother and daughter started eating right away, a delighted expression on their faces. The father was in a hurry, and didn't want to lose any more time than he already had. He opened the door for his family to leave, mother first. Before the girl left, she looked at the baker and gave him a thankful, tender smile, the door closing behind her. 

The baker stared at the closed door for a while, thinking about that sweet little girl. He had always wished to get married and have kids, but he has never been able to. It was something that saddened his heart if he dwelled on the thought for long. So he just shook his head to send it away, going back to the kitchen.  

The last rays of the late afternoon sun fell through the baker's window as he started preparing the ingredients and products for the next day and began the cleaning. Soon enough the kitchen, which had been covered in flour just a few moments ago, was looking remarkably clean. One would never have guessed that such an enormous amount of baking had ever happened there.  

He checks if everything is in his right place one again, locks the doors and turn off the lights, going upstairs, back to his little house. It was almost eight pm. The sun goes to rest, night rolling in over the town. The old clock in the corner of the living room chimed, the only things that seemed to be alive in the house, defiantly breaking the silence that fell upon everything. 

The baker goes to his bedroom, not turning any light on, and stands in front of the window. It was getting darker outside. He observes the faint lingering lilac sky fading into the shadow. A trembling gush of wind inaudibly drifts across the skyline. As the busy day comes to an end, he prepares to go to bed and get some rest. The day that followed was going to be equally busy and restless, like the next one, and the next one. 

He laid in bed with his eyes open, unwinding the tenseness and rigidness of his fragile and weary bones. The city lights gradually subsided ever so subtly, filling the shadow-emitted sky with a pleasant silence, a silence he loved so much.  

Outside, the never ending blackness consumed everything. Except the stars which stood out like pebbles in front of a storm. It was as if the sky was at war, the darkness wanted to control everything, yet the stars controlled the gleaming spots of where they originated. The war continued silently across the constellations as the baker closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.