on being a unicorn

Have you ever heard of the expres­sion, in busi­ness, of being a “uni­corn”?

The term was set orig­i­nal­ly to describe a very rare phe­nom­e­non — a pri­vate­ly-owned busi­ness that was worth more than a bil­lion dol­lars.  So rare, it was a uni­corn, and there­fore hard to judge by stan­dards applied to oth­er busi­ness­es.  It had to be assessed and judged on its own.

Now, there’s obvi­ous­ly a prob­lem with this anal­o­gy in that uni­corns, rather than being rare, are in fact imag­i­nary.  But I’m told to work with the idea of a thing so unusu­al, it’s a unicorn.

I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that my cook­books are uni­corns.  Two of them.

In talk­ing to agents, and to pub­lish­ers, and even to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ama­zon, I’ve realised that there isn’t anoth­er cook­book out there that is quite like ours.  Self-pub­lished, but not “POD,” which I’ve dis­cov­ered means “Print On Demand.”  That type of book does­n’t exist until some­one buys it, and then every copy is gen­er­at­ed on its own, with every order, and they’re rarely illus­trat­ed.  Every recipe in our books is illus­trat­ed by a gor­geous pho­to­graph, which every agent I’ve ever talked to says is impos­si­bly expen­sive.  But I had a secret weapon in my pho­tog­ra­ph­er: she’s my daugh­ter.  The recipes them­selves fol­low their own rule, some tak­ing up one page, some stretch­ing out as long as they need to.  My sour­dough recipe is a case in point.

The recipe itself takes up six pages in the book.  There are love­ly, love­ly illus­tra­tions of starters.

My instruc­tions for sour­dough rep­re­sent sev­er­al years of hard-won wis­dom, some gleaned from gen­er­ous friends, some by sheer labour and tri­al and error, and tears.  Every stage of the process is dear to me, from the whisk­ing of the starter, to the day-long “stretch and folds,” the shap­ing and rest­ing under a tea tow­el, to the even­tu­al blob of unpromis­ing-look­ing dough in its cosy ban­neton (a lit­tle bed of reeds wound in a beau­ti­ful pat­tern, which is even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to the bread itself).

The dough spends the night in the fridge, shiv­er­ing its way to being “proved,” a strange­ly apt word for sort of prov­ing itself, show­ing what it’s made of.  At this stage I do a lot of fin­ger cross­ing and fer­vent wish­ing.  There is no doubt that the best loaves come when they know they are meant as a gift, and I’ve often con­sid­ered fib­bing at this point and telling every loaf that it’s des­tined to be deliv­ered to Avery, and not greed­i­ly devoured by myself.

In the morn­ing, the dough is turned out onto a plate, which used to be an anx­ious moment.  In the begin­ning, my dough stuck to the ban­neton, and as I scraped it free, much of the pre­cious air inside was lost, result­ing in a loaf that’s called, in the busi­ness, a “fris­bee.”  No one wants one.  Grad­u­al­ly, my loaves have all come free of their bed with­out prob­lem, reveal­ing the pat­tern of the ban­neton, so beau­ti­ful­ly, includ­ing the cen­tre spiral.

Then, just when the dough prob­a­bly thinks it’s safe to take a breath, it must be slashed.  I’ve bought and been giv­en fan­cy and expen­sive lames for this job, I’ve had them stick in the dough and get lost, I’ve had razor blades sac­ri­ficed for this job.  At the end of the day, my best tool is my bread knife.  One must be ruth­less, quick, and decisive.

The hot glass Dutch oven (a birth­day gift from John, so I can watch the bread ris­ing) is removed gin­ger­ly from the oven and the lid removed in an instant, the dough low­ered into it, the lid popped back on.

And into the very hot oven it goes.  Always, always, there is a kit­ty, some­times two, lin­ger­ing around under the open oven door as I put the bread in quick­ly.  I live in fear of drop­ping the bak­ing dish on one of them.

Often at this moment, bread safe­ly in the oven and beyond any­thing fur­ther I can do for it, I retreat back to bed in my safe cocoon, with 48 min­utes of total pow­er­less­ness to enjoy.  The bread gods are in charge; I’ve imbued my loaf with every ounce of knowl­edge I’ve gained, every piece of advice I’ve absorbed, and all the love I can pos­si­bly give it.  It’s out of my hands.

And then out it comes.  Singing, or chirp­ing, or siz­zling, or what­ev­er word can best describe the joy­ous crack­ling of a loaf as it gets used to its new world.

A loaf of sour­dough must be left to its own devices for at least two hours before slic­ing into it.  These peo­ple in books who wax lyri­cal about cut­ting into a loaf of warm bread fresh from the oven are mon­sters!  At least for sour­dough, a rest­ing peri­od is essen­tial so the damp­ness of the bread can escape from the singing lit­tle stretchy places on the sur­face.  Yeast­ed bread is anoth­er mat­ter, but we won’t go there.

Oh, the mys­tery of those two hours!  All I want to do is to cut through that mag­i­cal­ly crack­ly crust (crumbs go EVERY­WHERE, the counter, the floor, the front of my sweater where they’re found hours lat­er, into cats’ fur), to estab­lish that what’s on the inside is just as lus­cious as it promis­es on the outside.

And then… lunch.  I time it so the loaf goes into the oven at 9:30 a.m., comes out at 10:18, and is ready to eat at 12:30 on the dot.

Ready for but­ter, to be smoth­ered with creamy salmon mousse, piled high with sea­son’s best toma­toes and gar­lic, driz­zled with olive oil, dipped into hot creamy red pep­per soup, giv­en a tiny spoon­ful of a friend’s gift of mar­malade.  There is noth­ing quite like the taste, and the sense of lov­ing accomplishment.

I realise in writ­ing this that the process is very, very much like writ­ing my uni­corns.  I trea­sure every moment of cre­at­ing them, even the painful, inde­ci­sive, repet­i­tive moments.  Every snip­pet of infor­ma­tion I’ve learned, every recipe I’ve honed, writ­ten, checked and rechecked, asked friends to cook to help in the test­ing, the phone calls to my moth­ers, expect­ing them to be as inter­est­ed as I am (they real­ly act as if they are), the effort Martha put into the per­fect draw­ings of gar­lic and lemons (the bread knife did look a bit like a pirate’s weapon, we decid­ed), every pho­to­graph Avery’s laboured over when all she real­ly want­ed was to eat her lunch, all the edits she’s done from her very own home, the glo­ri­ous hours spent on Zoom calls with Briony, our beloved design­er, the hours scrolling through the text on the tele­vi­sion screen, look­ing for mis­takes, the fun of hav­ing Tow­er Cap­tain Tom write the index with all his inim­itable eccen­tric­i­ty and delight, the long, long emails back and forth with Andrew the print­er over every last detail (the colour of the page-mark­ing rib­bon!), every rab­bit hole John has gone down with details of dis­tri­b­u­tion, tax­a­tion, stor­age, every moment Lau­ra has spent analysing the best way to intro­duce the book to the world…

Now I must wait for those 48 min­utes (or 12 weeks) till I can rip open the box, and not even wait­ing those last two hours, open the pages, and find out just how deli­cious it all will be.

My uni­corn.  I just can’t wait.