bakery

The 86 tram stops at the corner of Gertrude and Smith. On work days I alight, cross Smith and walk a block north to Peel. The other day I notice loaves of bread in a narrow red-fronted shop just up the hill on Gertrude, so today when I alight, I walk back along the tram, cross Gertrude, stroll into the bakery. If it has a name I can’t see it.

A suitably hip woman comes to the counter. My eyes dart all over the place: racks of loaves on the back wall, biscuits in jars on the counter, rolls, scrolls, scones and muffins. I tell her I’ll have everything, please. Fine, she says, we can pack up and go home. I settle for an Anzac and a cheese and olive muffin. I’m dangerous in a bakery.

The best food doesn’t come from trees or the earth, on vines or stalks or in pods. The best food comes out of ovens. What separates man from other animals is fire, salt and baked goods.

Fruit loaves, heavy with sultanas and cinnamon. Oh, yes. Sourdough loaves. Until I was macrobiotic I’d not heard the word sourdough. These days every second loaf is sourdough, though few are made from genuine sour starter. Crusty loaves appeal, but my teeth are no longer up to the job. Chewy is good, soft white and pulpy is ghastly.

For a while I had a crush on apple scrolls. Back in 1980 a bakery in Wangaratta round the corner from work made fabulous date scones. And a marvellous dark rye bread. Potts bread grabbed my attention till they went commercial.

There was a marvellous pie shop in Castlemaine in the year I taught there, 1976. The shop’s still there but the cadaverous grey-skinned bloke who baked the pies must be long buried. He looked like each day would be his last.

The first time I landed on Flinders Island as a 15 year-old the smell that greeted me came from the bakery at Whitemark. I’d never smelled fresh bread, or a bakery, before.

Take me to France. The cycling is heaven on a stick and every ride ends at a boulangerie.  The pain au raisins is my favourite everyday delicacy and it fits a cyclist’s back pocket perfectly. Just around the corner from the Hotel Diana in Paris’s Latin Quarter is a boulangerie that sells wonderful flans—pear, fig and pecan. A few of them made their way up to room 32.

Rock on.