Professor Butter Beard and Helene Schjerfbeck’s “The Bakery”
“Folding dough from the top, from one side, from the bottom, from the other side, I work, the twirl of my hands grounding my emotions. Using the fingers of my left hand, I rake the sticky mixture from my right hand into the bowl, wasting nothing. I know the rhythm of this poem by heart.” – Brenda Sutton Rose
I am being taught, or re-taught, patience.
Due to circumstances outside of my control (another current lesson), I have been granted the opportunity to listen to my body and soul begging me to “stop and smell the roses” (or my favorite snow-drops). Relearning the patience to grind the beans with aromatic seeds and cocoa nibs to achieve the perfect personal blend of daybreak coffee. The patience to giggle along with Nels as she stops to roll her entire body in her Gumby-like interpretation of Fosse’s jazz hands. The patience to allow myself to read an entire book on a rainy afternoon. And the all-day patience of baking the perfect loaf of bread.
It begins with a dream of flavors, such as dark Guinness stout and salty-sweet roasted walnuts. Then, over steaming coffee as the dawn creeps across the windows sill, deciding on the sweetener – brown sugar, molasses or summer’s honey. Taking the time to study the weather in person while walking with Nellie, in order to be flexible with the ratios of liquid to flour. Reading another few chapters so the bread can rise another hour. And baking until the air smells of a daybreak walk through a Paris alley as the bakers open their café doors.
And, what am I reading? A novel parading through the extended life of a young 18th century French woman who makes a complicated deal with the devil. A coffee table book touring me through all the oldest bakeries in Scotland. Conversations with Walt Whitman as he explores his love of Abraham Lincoln, and Vincent’s outpouring of trembling emotions and dangerous dreams in personal letters to his brother.
But I am spending today with Helene Schjerfbeck, an artist just recently introduced to me via my best friend and art companion in Oxford. “Are you going to the exhibition?” questions Wanda. I am still a bit limited physically, but after looking at just two of Ms. Schjerfbeck’s paintings, I immediately ordered the catalogue from the Metropolitan and have been deliciously devouring it page by page, painting by painting.
An interrupting note, dear reader. This essay, and resulting recipe, is part one of two. Ms. Schjerfbeck’s works have so influenced my thoughts that I will return to her next week as well to discuss her soul-capturing portraits.
“Helene Schjerfbeck is Finland’s most prominent female artist,” writes Max Hollein, Director and CEO of the Metropolitan, “honored as a national icon and revered in the Nordic countries. Yet she is little known elsewhere, and there have been few opportunities outside Sweden and Finland to see – let alone fully appreciate – Schjerfbeck’s oeuvre. Once you encounter it, however, you will never forget the striking presence and emotional depth of her paintings.”
I couldn’t agree more.
According to Dita Amory, curator of the Met’s current exhibition of Schjerfbeck’s works, the artist painted in her native Finland for nearly eighty years. She was born on July 10, 1862, in Helsinki, in the autonomous Grand-Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire. In 1866, aged four, she fell down some stairs injuring her hip, which prevented her from attending school and left her with a limp for the rest of her life. Yet at the age of eleven, she was accepted into the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society, an early recognition of her intense potential. There she learned the rudiments of painting in a Realist vein, a style that greatly influenced her early work.
As she gracefully maneuvered through her artistic life, her style morphed into a more impressionistic style, especially within her portraits of the soul. Yet the painting that first drew me into a conversation was painted early in the artist’s journey while on a tour of St Ives in Cornwall.
“There are thousands of subjects here I would like to paint,” wrote the artist in the summer of 1887. “The old fishing village down below, the new artists’ town on the hills above, a couple of sandy beaches, the harbour with the boats, heaths and greasy pastures browned by the hot summer sun.”
But, as I first cracked the spine of the catalogue, the book instinctually opened to her sensual painting capturing a Cornwall stone bakery at rest, lit by white daybreak sun through the single window, revealing rows of fresh bread still steaming from the oven, the baker’s scale laden with waiting flour, and the temporarily dark oven being reignited with wood being loaded onto the glowing embers.
Amory continues, “Schjerfbeck paid the local baker a small sum to place her easel at the door into his rough-hewn surrounding in order to experiment in tone and spatial structure with increasing imagination and freedom.”
Patience. I believe she captured patience. The patience required to step away from the first bake of the day, to fully absorb the taste of another sip of tea, to sit and read the morning news, to walk with the dog into town and back, to feed the fire and breathe.
The patience to pause and absorb the gift of fresh bread.
Professor Butter Beard’s Guinness Walnut Bread
2 Round Loaves
1 ½ cups walnut halves, toasted with 1 Tbsp kosher salt and tossed warm with 2 tsp sugar
1 bottle of Guinness Stout (11.2 ounces)
Cool water (enough to bring the stout to 2 ½ cups liquid
1 Tbsp honey (or dark molasses)
Optional – ½ cup of your sourdough starter
1 ½ tsp instant dry yeast
5 ½ cups bread flour
½ cup rye flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
1) Pour the Guinness into a 4-cup glass measuring cup and add enough cool water to bring to 2½ cups liquid. Whisk in the honey and the dry yeast. (If adding starter, whisk it also into the mix.) Set aside to allow the yeast to bloom.
2) Toast the walnut halves and salt in a cast iron skillet over medium heat until aromatic and just starting to brown, shaking the pan often. Remove from the heat and toss the nuts with the 2 tsp sugar. Spread onto a parchment paper-lined tray and set aside to cool. When cool, coarsely chop them into ½” pieces.
3) In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together the bread and rye flours and the salt. Add the dough hook and turn the mixer on low. Slowly pour in the liquid and let the mixer do the work to bring the contents into a smooth elastic dough. This should take roughly 8-10 minutes. Depending on the weather, feel free to cautiously add more water or flour. Add the cooled walnuts and mix just until the nuts are evenly distributed.
4) Spray a large bowl with non-stick spray and scrape the dough into the bowl. Roll the dough to cover with a skin of the oil and then cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set aside to double in size. This could take anywhere from 3-4 hours depending on the weather and heat of the room.
5) Punch down the dough and divide in half. Form each half into a smooth ball and place them into floured bannetons. Cover again with plastic wrap and proof for another hour or so.
6) Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Place a small baking tray on the lower shelf of the oven.
7) Carefully turn the loaves over onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Score the top with a sharp blade or knife.
8) When ready to bake, open the oven door and drop 6-8 ice cubes into the small baking tray. Place the breads on their sheet on the middle shelf and close the oven door. Bake the loaves for 45-50 minutes until deep golden brown. They should sound hollow when tapped on the base. Transfer the loaves to a wire rack to cool.
