Excerpt of How To Bake A Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal

Step One

STARTER

Sourdough starter, or mother dough as it is known, is made
from wild yeast living invisibly in the air. Each sponge is
different, according to the location it is born, the
weather, the time of its inception, and the ingredients
used to create it. A mother dough can live for generations
if properly tended, and will shift and grown and transform
with time, ingredients, the habits of the tender.

The Boudin mother dough, used to create the famously sour
San Francisco bread was already fifty years old when it was
saved from the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 by
Louise Boudin, who carried the mother dough to Golden Gate
Park in a wooden bucket. There it was packed in ice and
used to make bread daily until a new bakery could be built
at its current location. The mother dough, now more than
150 years old, is stored in a vault, “like a wild beast,”
and bread is made from it every day.

CHAPTER ONE

When the phone call that we have been dreading comes, my
daughter and I are gathered around the center island of the
Bread of Life kitchen. Sofia is leafing though a magazine,
the slippery pages floating down languidly, one after the
next.

I am experimenting with a new sourdough starter in an
attempt to reproduce a black bread I tasted at a bakery in
Denver a couple of weeks ago. This is not my own, treasured
starter, handed down from my grandmother Adelaide’s line,
rumored to be over a hundred years old. That “mother
dough”, as it is called, has won my breads some fame and I
guard it jealously.

This new starter has been brewing for nearly ten days. I
began with boiled potatoes mashed in their water, then set
aside in a warm spot. Once it began to brew and grow, I fed
it daily with rye flour, a little whole wheat and malt
sugar, and let it ferment.

On this languid May afternoon, I hold the jar up to examine
it. The sponge is alive and sturdy, bubbling with cultures.
A thick layer of dark brown hooch, the liquid alcohol
generated by the dough, stands on top. When I pull loose
wrap off the top of the bottle and stick my nose in, it is
agreeably, deeply sour. I shake the starter, stick my
little finger in, taste it. “Mmm. Perfect.”

Sofia doesn’t get as worked up over bread as I do, though
she is a passable baker. She smiles, and her hand moves
over her belly in a slow, warm way. Welcoming. It’s her
left hand, the one with the wedding set—diamond engagement
ring, gold band. The baby is due in less than eight weeks.
Her husband is in Afghanistan.

We have not heard from him in four days.

I remember when her small body was curled up beneath my
ribs, when I thought I was going to give her away, when the
feeling of her moving inside of me was both a terror and a
wonder. If only I could keep her that safe now.

The bakery is closed for the day. Late afternoon sunshine
slants in through the windows and boomerangs off the
stainless steel so intensely that I have to keep moving
around the big center island to keep it out of my eyes. The
kneading machines are still as I stir together starter and
molasses, water and oil and flour, until it’s a thick mass
I can turn out on to the table with a heavy splat. Plunging
my hands into the dark sticky blob, I scatter the barest
possible amounts of rye flour over it, kneading it in a
little at a time. The rhythm is steady, smooth. It has
given me enviable muscles in my arms.

“What do you want for your birthday?” Sofia asks, flipping
a page.

“It’s ages away!”

“Only a couple of months.”

“Well, I guess as long as there are no black balloons, I’m
good.” Last year, my enormous family—at least those members
who are still speaking to me– felt bound to present me with
graveyard cakes and make jokes about crow’s feet, which
thanks to my grandmother Adelaide’s cheekbones, I do not
have.

“A person only has to suffer through one 40th birthday in a
lifetime.” Sofia turns a page. “How about this?” She holds
up an ad for a lavish emerald necklace. “Good for your
eyes.”

“Tiffany. Perfect.” At the moment, I’m so broke a bubble
gum ring would be expensive, though of course Sofia doesn’t
know that the bakery is in trouble. “You can buy it for me
when you’re rich and famous.”

“When I am that superstar kindergarten teacher?

“Right.”

“Deal.”

I push the heel of my palm into the dough and it squeezes
upward, cool and clammy. An earthy bouquet rises from it,
and I’m anticipating how the caramelizing molasses will
smell as it bakes.

A miller darts between us, flapping dusty wings in sudden
terror. Sofia waves it away, frowning. “I hope we’re not
going to have a crazy miller season this year.”

“’The first moths of summer suicidal came,’” I sing, a line
from a Jethro Tull song, and for a minute, I’m lost in
another part of my life, another summer. Shaking it off, I
fold the dough. “It’s been a wet year.”

“Ugh. I hate them.” She shudders to give emphasis. Then she
closes her magazine and squares her shoulders. “Mom,
there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Finally. “I’m listening.”

She spills it, fast. “I told you Oscar’s ex-wife has been
arrested in El Paso and Katie has been living with her best
friend’s family, but Oscar really wants her to come and
live with me. Us. She’s got some problems, I won’t lie, but
she just needs somebody to really be there for her.” Sofia
has eyes like a plastic Kewpie doll, all blink and blueness
with a fringe of blackest lashes. “She can sleep upstairs,
in the back room. Close to me. She lived with us before
Oscar went to Afghanistan. It was fine.”

“Hmmm. I seem to remember she more or less hated you.”

“Okay, it wasn’t fine. Exactly.” Sofia bows her head. Light
arcs over her glossy, glossy dark hair. “She was pretty
angry then.”

“And she’s happy now?” I scatter flour over the dough and
table where it is beginning to stick. “Because her mother
is in jail and her father is at war?”

“No. I mean—“

The phone rings. I glance at it, then back to my daughter.
Obviously there is no possible way I can say no. The child
has nowhere to go, but—

To give myself a little time, I tug my hands out of the
dough, wipe them off with one of the thin white cotton
towels I love for covering the loaves when they rise. “How
old is she?”

A second ring.

“Thirteen. Going into eighth grade.”

“Middle school.” Not the most delightful age for girls.
Even Sofia was a pain at that age—all huffy sighs and hair-
flinging drama. And tears. Tears over everything.

The phone rings again, and I hold up a finger to
Sofia. “Hold that thought. Hello?”

“Good morning, ma’am,” says a deep, formal voice on the
other end. “May I please speak with Mrs. Oscar Wilson?”

Every atom in my body freezes for the space of two seconds.
Here it is, the moment I’ve been half-dreading since Sofia
came home four years ago, her eyes shining. Mama, he’s the
most wonderful man! He wants to marry me.

A soldier. An infantryman who’d already done two tours of
Iraq during the bloodiest days of the war, and would likely
do more. Oscar is older than Sofia by more than a decade,
divorced, and father to this brand-new adolescent who has a
very troubled mother.

Not a soldier, baby, I kept thinking.

And yet, the moment I met Oscar Wilson, with his beautiful
face and kind eyes and gentle manners, I knew exactly why
she loved him. It was plain he worshipped her in return.

But here is the phone call.

“Yes,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “Just a
minute please.” I put the mouthpiece against my stomach,
turn to my daughter. “Remember, they come to the door if
he’s dead.”

Sofia stares at me for a long, long second. Fear bleeds the
color from her lips. But she has the courage of a battalion
of soldiers. Taking a breath, she squares her shoulders and
reaches for the phone. Her left hand covers her belly, as
if to spare the baby. “This is Mrs. Wilson.”

She listens, her face impassive, and then begins to fire
questions, writing down the answers in a notebook lying
open on the counter. “How long has he been there? Who is my
contact?” And then, “Thank you. I’ll call with my
arrangements.”

As she hangs up the phone, her hand is trembling. Unspilled
tears make her lashes starry. She stands there one long
moment, then blinks hard and looks at me. “I have to go to
Germany. Oscar is…he was…” She clears her throat, waits
until the emotion subsides “—his truck hit an IED, four
days ago. He’s badly injured. Burned.”

I think that I will always remember how blue her eyes look
in the brilliant sunshine of the kitchen. Years and years
from now, this is what I will recall of this day—my
daughter staring at me with both terror and hope, and my
absolute powerlessness to make this better.

“I have to go to him,” she says.

“Of course.”

I think, how badly burned?

She turns, looks around as if there will be a list she can
consult. She’s like my mother in that way, wanting
everything to be orderly. “I guess I should pack.”

“Let me scrape this into a bowl and I’ll help you.”

As if her legs are made of dough, she sinks suddenly into
the chair. “How long do you think I’ll be there? What about
the baby?” “One step at a time, Sofia. I’m sure
you’ll have those answers before long. Just think about
getting there, see what…how…what you need to find out.”

“Right.” She nods. Touches her chest. “Mom. What about
Katie? She can’t stay where she is.”

A thirteen-year old whose mother is in jail, her father
wounded, her step-mother pregnant with a new baby and
flying off to Germany, leaving her with a woman she doesn’t
know. “She’s never met even met me. Won’t she be scared?”

“Maybe for a little while, but I can’t let her go to a
foster home. She can just come for the summer. Grandma will
help you, I’m sure, and Uncle Ryan and—“

I hold a hand up. There is only one answer. “Of course,
baby. Let’s get those arrangements made now, too, so you
don’t have to worry about her.”

She leaps up and hugs me, her mound of belly bumping my
hip. It is only as I put my arms around her that I feel the
powerful trembling in her shoulders. I squeeze my eyes shut
and rub her back, wishing I could tell her that everything
is going to be okay. “Do your best, Sofia. That’s all the
world can ask.”

Her arms tighten around my neck, like iron. Against my
shoulder, I feel her hot tears soaking into my
blouse. “Thank you.”