Typical Day

Typical Day

At 2:30AM, most people are sound asleep in their beds. Over at 221C Baker Street, however, Dorothy, an aspiring baker, is just waking up.

Rolling out of bed, Dorothy ties her hair into a sloppy knot, pulls on her reflective jacket, and hops on her bike to work. It's still pitch-black outside, but such is the life of a morning-shift baker at a local bakery called, "Yeast of Eden." 

Dorothy gets to Yeast of Eden seven minutes early. Her shift manager, Donald, is a notorious stickler for timeliness. Last week, one of Dorothy's co-workers arrived exactly two minutes late, out of breath after her train broke down and she was forced to run nearly two blocks from the second-nearest station.

No one at the bakery has seen her since. Rumor has it Donald called in a couple favors with high-paying clientele—tough-boy mobsters with a weakness for the flaky comfort of a morning croissant.

Dorothy makes a point never to be late. And she isn't late today, either, as she enters through the side entrance to the bakery at a cool 3:23AM. She picks her apron off its hook and slides her feet into the ugly, but ergonomic, clogs that bakers use. With seventeen-hour-long shifts, Dorothy junked the stilettos pretty early on in her baking career.

Dressed and raring to go, Dorothy checks her name on the bakery's task list. It's the wee hours of the morning, so the list is geared towards producing all the fresh baked goods patrons are going to want with their morning lattes, cappuccinos, and other fancy drinks that Dorothy can barely afford on her baker's salary. Generally, that means cinnamon rolls, croissants, and Danishes, in addition to the artisanal breads like Italian Rosemary and Kalamata Olive that are staples at a bakery like Yeast of Eden.

The first thing on Dorothy's list is to prepare the croissant dough. Though Yeast of Eden is a relatively small operation, it sometimes seems to Dorothy that she spends her entire life around dough. She kneads it, smells it, touches it, tastes it. And when she's really bored, she even talks to it. She and dough have had some really great conversations over the years.

However, with only a couple hours before the bakery opens for the day, Dorothy doesn't have time to talk to her BFF, dough, today. Instead, she heads to the huge industrial fridge to grab her other friend, milk. It needs to be heated until it's warm, but there's no need to use the microwave. The oven has been going for a while now, and it's approximately a bazillion degrees in the kitchen. It should take just a few minutes for the milk to be warm.

In a bakery, there's no such thing as a free moment to wait around for something to finish, not when there are dozens and dozens of cinnamon rolls to be prepped—and not when Donald is watching her every move, just waiting to pounce on the briefest of brief moments of inactivity. Sometimes Dorothy thinks Donald faults her for not having an extra three sets of hands.

In the meantime, she heads back to the main kitchen area in order to begin the dough for the baguettes. For most other people, dough is just an unfinished product. Dorothy, however, knows that dough is the make-or-break, be-all and end-all of any bakery.

There's a reason only experienced bakers are trusted with the task of making dough. Interns and trainees are assigned things like cutting out cookies and rolling up the rugelach. That's just arts and crafts class. Dorothy's three-year-old niece could do that. But dough? That's where the magic happens.

It's pretty good therapy, too. Other people are asleep at 4:00AM, but while the rest of the world is sleeping, Dorothy works her way through her long list of Things That Need Punching in the Face. Bakers don't have great medical benefits, and can't afford counseling services. Turns out, though, that punching down dough while pretending it's your shift manager's face is a pretty good substitute.

Dorothy loses herself in the dough for a while. A timer goes off somewhere, waking her from her trance. It's 4:20AM, and the croissants need to be rolled up. Dripping sweat, Dorothy pushes up her sleeves as high as they can, cracks her knuckles, and starts rolling. The only thing to break the monotony is deciding which croissants she should christen with a stick of chocolate or a dusting of almond sprinkles.

At 6:00AM, Dorothy and the other bakers start loading the prepped, not-yet-baked goods into the industrial ovens. The ultimate goal is to have the bread baked and on the shelves by 6:45AM, so that it's warm and soft for the early-bird patrons to step through the door at 7:00AM.

Her first shift is done; Dorothy has a thirty-minute break before starting the second, early-afternoon shift. As she takes off her apron and clogs, Dorothy watches the businesspeople in their suits rush through the door, grab their coffees and almond croissants, and rush out the door again in a hurry to get to their high-paying desk jobs. She never talks to these customers, and they don't even know she exists. But they love her baked goods.

After so long on her feet, just sitting in a chair at all is an amazing feeling. In the corner of the bakeshop, Dorothy pulls out a small parcel from her back pocket, and unwraps a fragrant, good-sized stash of the day's croissants, cinnamon rolls, and grain breads.

At last, breakfast. It only took her six hours, two sore arms, and a few broken nails and opened callouses to make—but does it matter? Maybe not so much when it's bread made by your own hands after a long, long day's honest work.