Baking

Of course Marcus would think it a good idea to take up baking once the world ended. After sleeping for so long, Marcus began craving food other than fish and fruit so he went back to the field and gathered enough clumps of foxtail heads to fill the cooking pot.

Sleeping for so long had brought back many childhood memories. "You could make bread with wheat in Minecroft... Foxtail is kind of like wheat right?" Marcus pondered. He picked up a habit of talking to himself now. It had to be done because who else was there to talk to?

Once Marcus returned to the river, he climbed up to the cave and dragged two rocks into the shade of it. One to sit on and one to grind the foxtail on. He also acquired a smooth, circular stone about half a foot wide to grind the foxtail with.

To start off the process, Marcus took a small clump of foxtail and began to lay it on top of the larger rock. He then took up the grinding stone and grated it against the crop. After twenty minutes of grinding, collecting the remains together and grinding some more, Marcus had finally managed to produce a small amount of foxtail flour.

He brushed it into the cooking pot before continuing to grind some more. The refining process took him up until lunch just to get it to just under half full and Marcus found that a circular motion was the most effective method. The powder was a light green and didn't feel very fine. More rough and coarse. He then slowly began to add water whilst mixing it with his hands.

The dough wasn't as stretchy and didn't come together in the same way wheat flour did but it was still better than nothing. After kneeding long enough to work up an appetite, Marcus left it to rise in the sun.

His lunch was comprised of mostly a sorrel, garlic mustard and dandelion salad with fish mixed in that he'd mashed and shredded into a paste similar to canned tuna. Marcus enjoyed every mouthful. 'If only I had some mayonnaise...'

Once Marcus began to give it some thought, he realised mayo could actually be in reach. Some of the childhood memories he reacquired were of him staring at the back of cereal boxes and ketchup bottles. Wasn't mayonnaise just oil, eggs... plus 'vinegar and mustard to stabilise it?'

He gasped as the last part quoted his mother. Too much was coming back at once it was hard to retain all the information. This wasn't fair. "They're MY memories! Give them back!" He screamed into the sky.

Punching the ground, Marcus looked towards his dough that wasn't rising. But why not? He'd need to bake it next but to do that he'd need an oven. The documentaries he'd recalled showed how tribes in Africa constructed adobe ovens from clay and something else...

Walking round the side of the ledge in front of the main cave, Marcus found what he was looking for: Termite hills.

There were some abandoned ones as well as other mounds full of life. Marcus broke off a large chunk of a dead termite hill before carrying it down to a clay deposit he found near the river. He used a thick stick to expose an area before crushing the chunk he gathered into the clay.

It broke up easily as the termite's had left it for some time now. Marcus left the product of the clay-termite mixture and came back with clumps of reeds. He then cut them up into small bits with his knife and beat them into the clay as well.

Not wanting to move tons of clay up the cliff ledge, Marcus began putting the adobe oven together near the bottom of the ledge instead. He wouldn't need the suns heat anyway. Once he lit a fire inside, it should harden in no time. Marcus had to shape it first though so he got to work rolling clumps up for the base.

'Am I doing this right?' He thought trying to copy what he'd seen in the documentary as best he could. After a while, Marcus had the walls and base steady. Now he began to curve it up towards the top until it narrowed enough for a chimney. The front was open but not too much that it wouldn't trap any heat. Now all he had to do was light a fire.

Marcus used the firesteel like he had been practicing with for most of his stay in the valley. It was now a lot easier to get it right on the first or second time but man did it wear marks into his hands! Gripping the steel until his knuckles were white hurt after a while but he was getting quicker at lighting fires every time. Soon it would stop leaving marks. Hopefully...

Marcus filled the oven to the brim until a small bonfire gorged the inner walls. Once it had died down, it was getting to be quite a late lunch but it would all be worth the wait. He found a flat rock to use as a baking tray and placed the foxtail dough in the adobe oven. Marcus let the flames build up a bit more so it would bake.

Although, after waiting a while Marcus finally realised why it hadn't risen. He needed yeast. 'How exactly do I find yeast in the wild?' Maybe some things really are out of reach or at least for his generation. If there would be any other generations...

It wasn't quite a flatbread because he'd still clumped it all together but it wouldn't be pretty. In fact, it came out as a saggy, stiff lump. Marcus didn't care though. Maybe it would cook faster next time if he used the cooking pot in the oven.

He'd make sure to remember that. The small, foxtail bread loaf tasted the same as it looked. Chewy and dry. Marcus loved every bit of it. Sure it definitely wasn't a french baguette and it wasn't the same as fresh, home-made bread but it still TASTED of bread and that was all he needed to be happy. To get back just a little bit of the old world.

Marcus hoped others would come here because he wanted to share his bread with someone else. It was then that he noticed something from where he'd got the reeds. It was a small flooded area of more stagnant water like a pond.

He'd built the oven close to it and now there were wild mallard ducks all coming out to see him. There was a brief flash that only lasted a second. It was a childhood memory of how he'd fed some ducks.

Marcus ran over to them and the ducks scurried back to the pond. "Sorry! Sorry..." Marcus hushed not realising how silly he just looked. He threw some chunks of bread in the water and soon they came back out again.

Maybe he should catch one and eat it... Although the thought was tempting and he even began to drool, he didn't want to break the trust of his new friends. When they were eventually all around him as he sat feeding them, he finally noticed the tears that had been streaming from his eyes. 'I've gone mad...'