The kitchen is mostly empty of people. Only the technicians working on the venting system and one cook are in there when Johanna, Delly and the two guards bring me in. Johanna is pissed that we had to bring guards, but she wasn't able to negotiate that out. The higher-ups don't know that Finnick walked me out and nothing happened, and this is an “infinitely dangerous environment” as far as Keller is concerned given all the knives and other kitchen items I could start a war with. There was apparently a heated argument between him and Johanna in front of Coin about potential situations that might occur and the end result was that if there weren't guards with tranquilizing guns standing within 300 yards of me at all times there wouldn't be any me in the kitchens at all.
The kitchen is overly warm because of the lack of vents but we're stationed on the side where they are working they're just not on yet as we're not. Finnick and Annie aren't going to be down unless called to say that it's okay. Delly is holding one of my sketchbooks and two from a set of pencils that she got from Haymitch after he left my room ready for cake designs because she and Johanna have faith that will happen.
The head cook nervously works her way across the room towards us around one of the guards and stands next to Johanna, “So...” she says, “you're a baker?” she looks me up and down as though this is the opposite of everything that should be. Is she the only person in the nation who hasn't heard of this Girl on Fire and Baker's Boy crap? Of course, whether or not I can actually remember how to do any of this...
“I was raised as one,” seems a safe answer.
“We're hoping doing some work in the kitchen will help his memory straighten out some more,” Johanna fills in, “Activities that are practically second nature like me and axes,” she gives a devilish wink.
The cook looks slightly pale but then turns to me, “Bread then?”
“Alright,” I nod and follow her to the storage area where ingredients are kept trailed by our entourage. The room is larger than part of me was anticipating but then this place stores for what's essentially a city not just one little shop which is what I grew up in, right? And it produces all the “varied” meals that they eat not just one type. From things we've gone through District Twelve had a butcher's shop and other different types and a lot of families cooked their own meals it wasn't provided. Whereas most people here in Thirteen are fed on the other side of this wall in a sort of cafeteria situation where they have a semblance of selection.
She gets one of the all too familiar carts and starts loading things on to it as we walk through, and I look around making note of things that are there. Most everything is very plain and only what's necessary. I feel as though at least in Twelve we had more excitement in our food and this is why Prim was so excited about the prospect of food deliveries from the other districts.
“There,” she says, putting a jug of yellow liquid on the top of the cart and wiping her hands on a cloth on it.
I look over what she has, wheat flour, white flour, yeast, something looks amiss but I can't. The liquid is the wrong color. I pick it up.
“Everything alright, Peeta?” Johanna asks.
“This isn't--” I look down at it.
“What's wrong with the oil?” she asks.
Oil? That is not what my brain was expecting. Honey? That's—yes. Something rolls in: an ounce and a half of yeast added to nine cups warm water and a cup of honey make sure it's chuckling before you add fifteen cups white flour, then a half cup and a bit melted butter and another cup of honey. Six cups of whole wheat flour once the dough has proofed enough...
“Oil?” I shake my head, “No. Oil doesn't—no. Where's the butter? Do you have butter? Especially if there's a cake to be made later on there has to be butter and honey. Honey for the bread, or sugar at the very least. You must have that? It helps activate the yeast and the bread tastes better overall too,” I find my hand going to my temple, “You just—no.”
I realize Johanna is laughing, and when I turn around Delly seems torn between doing the same and crying. She has a hand on Johanna's arm for support. The cook lady looks almost terrified though.
“I'm sorry,” I tell her, “It just...” I take a deep breath, “It explains some about the way your bread tastes if all you've had is oil.”
“How—how much butter would you be talking?” she asks.
“We...would apparently make what I'm thinking about in batches that used a little over a half a cup during the mixing and then more to glaze before baking. There was only so much we could fit in the ovens at a time.”
Delly gives a small clap and when I turn again she looks self conscious and plays with the edge of the sketchbook.
“But it's not more than a cup of butter all told,” I finish.
“We can do that,” the cook says, “Honey though...I'm not sure. How much there?”
“Two cups; but it can be substituted for sugar just straight. We've...we had to do that before if it was a bad time for the bees. The honey was more important for the apothecary at times.”
“Alright,” the cook says, “I'll check for the other things. You take this out to the main room and I'll follow with whatever I find.”
“If you're sure,” I answer, taking hold of the cart and turning it around. I'm followed out to the kitchen station we started at and I begin examining the cabinets and drawers for the supplies we'll need. I find a saucepan to warm up the water for the yeast and honey or sugar and a couple of large mixing bowls. I'm only able to find about ten bread tins of varying sizes so I get out a few trays as well figuring I can make rolls or braided bread. It's very refreshing to actually be remembering things. It takes a moment before I realize that I’m beginning to feel lighter and there’s a weird rattling, which when Johanna puts a hand over mine and then the pans stop clicking together was my fault.
“Easy, Blondie,” she says.
“Are we going too fast?” Delly asks.
“Right now we can go as slow as we need,” she says, “Right? Nothing’s actually going yet.”
“Right,” I agree, “and...” no, too much. Too much, I drum my fingers against the counter and take a deep breath, “...with baking there’s a lot of time to wait. The—the yeast as to chuckle, the dough has to rise and then rise, and then...no, it doesn’t...it just bakes then, after you get it...oil...they were using oil. My mother would...”
“Probably shouldn’t go that way,” Johanna says.
“No, maybe not.”
“Oh!” Johanna turns, excited, as the cook returns with a metal jar clutched to her chest, “What do you have for us?”
Delly is helping me fill a pan with water and set things to heat on the stove so that the yeast will have a nice warm bath to activate in. There’s something in the back of my mind about the freshness of the yeast, and a young boy, older than me though having a minor freak out at being told that yeast was tiny little creatures that might come to life and creep into his bed and tickle him in his sleep.
“I got the sugar...” she says, cautiously, setting it with the rest of the things. I can feel her jump when Johanna whoops and applauds her but she doesn’t get bitten or hugged. She settles back to watch but doesn’t relax, neither do the guards standing nearby, if anything else they’ve moved slightly closer.
“They’re waiting for a bread attack,” Johanna remarks to Delly and she shakes her head in reply.
Not being able to find a lid I cover the pan with one of the flat trays for braided bread to help the water heat faster, and examine the sugar and flour, realizing it’s a habit ingrained to check for bugs, even though everything is so sterile down here there’s not much chance of that, and once we start to hear the water bubbling I take it off and pour it into the mixing bowl and wait for it to cool down a little bit while dissolving sugar into it.
“You should--” the cook starts.
“Let him,” Johanna replies, from where she’s sitting a little ways away on the counter top, “this is about him remembering what he used to do.”
“But you’re not...the yeast...” she explains before Johanna can hush her again.
“If the water’s too hot it’ll die, if the water’s too cold it won’t wake up right,” I answer. It’s one of those rote things, but I can still see the other boy wriggling away from someone’s fingers running up his legs, hurry, hurry, the yeast bugs are coming! The yeast bugs!
Oh, come on, now! We were just having fun.
When she doesn’t say anything to that, but make a little thinking noise.
“One way the bread won’t rise at all, and just sort of crack when you try to proof it, and the other...” I can feel things bubbling up in my own head, “you can still wake it up, warming the dough after and it’ll do different things to the flavor the yeast waking up after, it can make things more buttery, though...you lot haven’t been using butter, so...that explains so much, and the crust is crunchier that way...but if you’re baking it too long as well, and...”
“Peeta,” I hear Delly, by my side, “You’re going off a bit--”
“Focus on your bread, huh, Blondie? Or your water’ll be too cold as well?”
“Right. Right,” I put a knuckle in to check it, just safe, scoop in the yeast and give it a little swish and then cover with the towel and put on the stove top but not right by the burner just close.
By the time the first batch of flour is measured out and checked for clumps everything should be fine. Yeast is definitely chuckling. I feel that was a Dad term more than a Mom one, and I have Delly scoop flour in while I mix it up by hand something else the Thirteen-Cook seems perturbed by even though I washed them again before hand. Hand-washing is also something that comes second nature. Any time you stop and do something out of the bowl you wash your hands before they go back in to the bowl, that was definitely something—beaten—in by Mom. You don’t want to make anyone SICK. If they get SICK they won’t COME BACK.
But Thirteen being so sterile, everything is done with utensils. Flour all mixed in, back under the towel and onto the oven it goes, because the oven is heating now and warming, and that helps things rise, rise, rise.
Now it’s the half hour wait. Measure out the other flour, and there’s butter to be melted but that can wait for a bit, but they were right. I can feel things beginning to click together in my head. Other things to do with the bakery, and working in it as I was mixing the dough and working, and not just the bits and pieces about Mom and her Methods.
“We had little pastries? With fruit jam—when that was possible?”
“Yes,” Delly nods, and she has that look where she’s trying not to get too excited.
“But mostly it would be things like berry bread, and swirl bread, or sweet cakes? And well, this bread and grain bread?”
She nods again, and her hands are twitching but it’s not a threat. We’re safe here, and she’s safe. Delly will always be safe. It’s how she is. Delly is safe. It’s a different safe than Johanna. Johanna is safe, but she’s also pointy, because that is Johanna, but Delly is round and safe, she always has been even if she’s been angry.
“And meat pies, with onions and potatoes?”
She nods again, but it’s a little hesitant now. Oh, because of where the meat must have come from. Johanna slides closer down the counter. So, we’ll leave that then. Upset Delly not good. Stay good, Peeta.
“Fancy cakes like the wedding cake, that’s not an often thing? That’s not how weddings were in Twelve, though?” I can almost, almost see a party table in a building there, but I really, really don’t get wedding from it, that seems all tiny and private and little meal with a special tiny pastry thing just for the happy couple and no one else. I can see two of them coming in holding hands, snuggle close, pointing to just a little almost biscuit thing and asking if there was anyway to make it red swirled because that was her favorite color.
“That’s not how weddings are most places,” Johanna says, “but they want to show off for Snow. We’re alive and well and living large here in Thirteen. Look how awesome it is. We can throw fancy parties too. We’re not all gray and drab and boring!” She leans her head back so that she almost hits it on the wall, “We want our seven tiered cake and our--”
“Three,” Delly says, “I think Plutarch got it where he was allowed three, finally.”
Johanna sighs, “You know what I meant.”
“Three tiers?” I ask them.
They both nod.
“That’s still a lot to work with. I don’t know that I would have gotten that much to work with very often if at all.”
Delly shakes her head, “Not that I got shown at least. Do you want the book?”
I look at the clock. It gives me an excuse because nothing has hit me yet, “No. It’s butter melting time. Let’s move the dough so it doesn’t get over stimulated, and melt the butter and sugar together on the stove top. It’s a bustle again for a bit, butter melting, sugar being dissolved into it and then cooling a little so that hands aren’t burned while it’s mixed into the dough, which has ballooned up, quite obviously given the towel is no longer hanging down slightly into the bowl itself.
Johanna finds the act of beating the dough quite appealing, but says she’ll try that if we get allowed back into the kitchen again for a second, and just lets me go for this time. Soon enough the bowl has been greased with the last of the melted butter mixture and the dough is sitting in there again, covered with the towel and is on it’s last rise before it’s in the tins waiting to be baked, and then I take the sketchbook from Delly and go to a blank page and stare at it for a moment, but really this is Finnick and Annie’s cake and they’re not here, so I just write their names and instead stare at that.
I must have been to District Four during the tour but I know nothing of it and that would have taught me so little anyway. Johanna has at least known them more than I do through her years of being a Victor.
“So, tell me about the happy couple and District Four,” I tell her.
“Why?” there’s an old edge of suspicion creeping in.
“He needs ideas before he can draw and they’re not here,” Delly explains.
“Oh, right...” Johanna says, “I can see about getting them down...” she glances over to the guards but neither of them budge for the moment and she glowers, “Has he not been fine?”
“The part with the knives hasn’t happened yet,” one of them points out. Which they are right about. They were told that after this part I will be chopping the dough into sections and then rolling and dividing it between different tins and trays and things. They tried to get it that someone else would do the cutting but it was pointed out that I needed to be allowed to use these things to prove that I can be trusted.
“FINE,” Johanna retorts. Then she turns to me, “Fishing. Boats. Fish. Nets. Shells. Waves. Ocean. I’m not sure how much of that you get out in Twelve. It’s much the same as Seven, I imagine. Trees. Trees. Grass and trees.”
Delly nods.
“You saw the river upstairs though?”
I nod, “I know what some things look like, and there’s recordings.”
Johanna nods, “I’m sure Beetee can get stuff for you,” she glances towards one of the corners of the room.
“She has such lovely red hair,” Delly remarks, “and he does use that trident in the games, but I don’t know you want to bring that up in the wedding.”
I shake my head, “but that’s up to bride and groom,” I make more notes on the paper, sketching also a few different variations of three tier sizes at the bottom of the page. Tall, short, square, round...a lot of it depends on how much ingredients they allot us too, as to how big the sections can be.
Speaking of sections. There’s cutting dough now, and putting it into the greased tins and then separating it into groups now and Johanna leaning closer as I roll it into strips and braid the loaves and lay them onto the trays, rolling the ends under and sealing them with butter that part surprises me, but again an automatic thing to do. We set the soon to be bread on the stove for a few moments to rise again before it goes in the oven to bake.
Johanna turns to the guards with her arms folded but somehow manages to look ready to spring, “Nobody died,” she says, “I’m so surprised. Can you call Finnick and Annie down now?”
