It wasn’t that she kept the recipe to herself. Maria would take her dough on a wooden plank to the outdoor brick oven behind Nikos the baker’s house and it was there that she would give her recipe to anyone who asked.
As in other mountain villages, it is the custom on special holidays for women to bake their bread in the communal oven when the baker finishes his own loaves. It is also the practice on any weekday for villagers to bring casseroles for their evening meal to the wood-burning oven and allow them to simmer slowly.
It was when Maria removed her bread from the kiln and the women saw the beautiful large loaves with the golden crust that she was asked again and again about the recipe. “I told you,” she would say, “it is wheat flour, lukewarm water, yeast, salt, olive oil, milk, and honey.” She named the ingredients freely, but she never explained exactly how much of each nor did she mention when she added the honey and the olive oil. And she would never knead the bread in front of anyone. If a visitor was in the house, Maria’s bread-making skills were not on display.
“Your touch should be as light as the wings of an angel,” her mother told Maria, passing down this secret from her own mother. “An angel does not pound the dough,” she said, gently kneading and turning the dough. “An angel brushes the bread with its wings and flies away.”
Also, the women at the communal bakery never seemed to notice that Maria always removed her bread last. The other women would say, “Your turn, Maria, take your bread.” But Maria would always demur and wait for the others to remove their loaves, giving her bread the important two or three additional minutes in the hot oven.
Sadly, Maria died unexpectedly before she had a chance to pass all her secrets to her daughter, except the one about kneading and the admonition that “this bread must be made from the heart.” So when Maria died prematurely, the secrets went with her. Or perhaps, as her daughter liked to think, the secrets were carried away on the wings of an angel.
Published in The National Herald, March 2014