5:30 A.M. Breads and Other Things that Rise

“Mom” is the most important member of our bread team, and I’m not just saying this because we’re a female-run kitchen. When I say “mom,” I’m not talking about my mom, or myself, or any matriarch who works for us. I’m talking about our bread starter, a.k.a. “the mother.” The mother needs to be fed twice a day (every day!) in order to be the foundation for many of the breads we produce at Huckleberry.

I turn to Melissa, our enthusiastic new bread girl, and ask the question I ask every morning at this time: “Did you feed the mother yet?” She’s slow to respond, so I brace myself because I have a sense that I know the answer. “No, I’m sorry, I forgot,” she says earnestly and apologetically. “I’m doing a bunch of things right now: making flatbread, pulling brioche out of the oven, and mixing the croissant dough. I’m sorry I missed it.” I roll my eyes with a high level of annoyance and not much sympathy, even though I know she’s working hard and there’s a lot to manage on that station. “This is not really something that you can forget!” I say with as much diplomacy as I can muster, which is not very much. “If you feed the mother too late, it can dramatically affect how our bread tastes and feels, and if you’re really late, the bread could be way too sour or worse, you could kill the mother and it can take weeks to get the bread looking and tasting right again!”