"What are you making, Jolena?" Pippa asked.
"I'm baking bread for the family," Jolena explained.
"How do you do it?" Pippa asked. "May I watch?"
"Yes," Jolena replied, after the younger doll had climbed up onto the stool, "but it's more complicated than baking cookies, so it takes longer."
Jolena went on, "You don't just mix all the ingredients and then bake it. I would be happy to let you watch, but we will have to go and do other things in the middle of it several times and then come back."
That was OK with Pippa. While she watched, Jolena measured water and salt, and put them into a container she called a bread-machine pan.
Next she added flour. Jolena said she was using two kinds of flour. One is called whole wheat. She used a lot of it. The other flour is called rye. She explained that wheat and rye flours are made from the seeds of special kinds of grasses. She only used a half a cup of the rye.
Finally, Jolena took a smaller container out of the refrigerator's freezer section and brought it to the bread machine.
Jolena showed Pippa what was in the container. It looked almost like the flour, but grainy. "This is called yeast," she told the younger doll.
Then she used a teaspoon to measure a small amount and added it on top of the flour in the bread-machine pan.
"This yeast stays dormant (DOR-ment) in the freezer," she said after she had put the yeast away again in the freezer. "That's like it's sleeping until it's needed. When it finds itself in the bread dough, it wakes up. Now maybe you could help me get the bread-machine pan down from here and over to the other counter, where the bread machine is. I can do it by myself, but it will be easier if you help."
Pippa liked to help. It made her feel important. "What does the yeast do?" she asked, as she helped Jolena bring the bread-machine-pan down from the stool, move the stool and bring the pan up to where the bread machine was.
Jolena put the bread-machine pan into the bread machine. "Yeast is leavening (LEH-vah-ning)," Jolena told her. "It makes the bread big and puffy, so it's easier to eat."
"Charlotte's special bread isn't big and puffy," Pippa said. "It's like a cracker. Why is that?"
"That's matzoh (MAHT-zuh)," Jolena explained. "Charlotte was celebrating Passover. Matzoh is unleavened bread. That means there's nothing in it to make it puffy, like yeast or baking powder. One way Charlotte celebrates Passover is by pretending to eat matzoh instead of regular bread. She uses it to make some special dishes, too."
"Yes," Pippa agreed. "I had forgotten. A few days ago, Charlotte fixed us a big meal to pretend to eat. She called it a Seder (SAY-der). She told us the story of Passover. It was interesting."
Jolena thought the story was interesting, too. (You can read about how Charlotte celebrates Passover, if you like. There is a link to a story about it at the end of this one.)
Jolena pressed a button on the bread machine. The bread machine started making a whirring sound in short bursts. Pippa had to stand on the cookie box, because she wanted to see.
Pippa could see the flour moving around through the little window in the machine.
"Now," Jolena said, "we go off and do something else for a while. The machine will beep when it's time to come back."
"What is it doing?" Pippa asked. "I mean the bread machine. What does it do?"
"It can bake bread," Jolena explained, "but the bread wouldn't be as pretty and not as good for sandwiches if we let it do that. It also makes one very big loaf, not the little loaves I like to make for us. Most of the time I use it on the dough (DOH) setting. It just mixes everything to make dough. That's what we call the bread before it's baked. When the machine is done, I will shape the loaves and put them in another pan. You'll see when we come back."
The dolls went off to do other things. Jolena sat down at the computer to write an email to her friend Elizabeth, who is on the Doll Ski Team with her.
Pippa got her bear and pretended to have a tea party.
After what seemed like a long time, Pippa heard a beeping sound.
"That's the bread," Jolena called as she got down from the chair at the computer.
Pippa came to watch Jolena get the dough ready. First Jolena said Pippa could help her clean the countertop, because dolls had been sitting and standing on it, and it needed to be clean for preparing the dough.
Jolena dumped the dough out of the bread machine pan. She rolled it and pressed it with her hands. "I'm kneading (NEE-ding) the bread," she explained. "It does something to the wheat flour in a way we can't see. It makes tiny strands of the dough cross each other so they can trap the air the yeast gives off. Mandy explained it to me."
While Pippa watched, Jolena divided the dough up into four parts. She rolled each one with her hands to make a loaf. "These will be just the right size for doll sandwiches," she said.
Jolena got out a big pan that had four sections, one for each loaf. She sprayed each section with cooking spray. Then she put one of the loaves into each section.
Jolena put the pan on top of the stove and covered it with a clean dishcloth, so the dough wouldn't dry out. She wasn't planning to use the burners for anything, so it would be safe there.
Then they cleaned off the countertop again. Pippa noticed that Jolena had some flour on her cheek. She got a tissue and wiped the flour off.
"Thank you," Jolena said, glancing at the time on the top of the stove. "Now we wait for the bread to rise."
"Does it rise from the dead?" Pippa asked. "Veronika told me we celebrate Easter on Sunday, and that's when Jesus rose from the dead, she told me."
"That's a different meaning of rise," Jolena explained. "A balloon can rise in the air, if it's that kind of balloon."
"Children can rise out of bed in the morning," Jolena went on. "Dolls can rise to the occasion. That means that when something is very difficult for them they do it anyway," Jolena explained. "Yeast gives off a gas that makes the bread rise. That means it goes from being flat to big and puffy."
"Big and puffy," Pippa said, "and yummy to pretend to eat! So what does it mean that Jesus rose from the dead?"
"I read," Jolena explained, "that Jesus sat up on Easter morning, got up, took off the cloth he was wrapped up in, folded it neatly and left it where they had laid him on Friday. Then he walked out to tell his friends he was alive."
"That's a miracle!" Pippa said, and Jolena agreed.
It would take some time for the bread to rise. It was not going to get up out of the pan, fold the dishcloth and leave it on the pan. It was just going to get bigger in the pan.
Jolena went back to her email letter to Elizabeth.
Pippa went back to her tea party with her bear.
In a little while, Jolena checked on the bread. "It's ready to bake," she told Pippa, setting the oven temperature with the dolls' cell phone.
The dolls had to wait until the stove beeped. That beep meant the oven was hot enough. Then Jolena put the bread into the oven, which was very hot, so she was careful not to melt her vinyl. She could see the bread through the oven's big window.
Jolena used the cell phone again to set the timer on the stove, and then the two dolls went back to what they had been doing. Jolena tried to think of what else she wanted to tell Elizabeth.
Pippa asked Bear if he wanted any more tea. Bear didn't seem to mind that the pretend tea had become cold. Pippa told him she was sorry about that, but she had been busy baking.
When the bread was finished baking, the timer on the stove beeped. Jolena took the pan from the oven and removed the loaves to a rack to cool. "Now we will wash all the things we used," she said. "You can help."
"I think I know why Jesus rose on Easter morning," Pippa said while Jolena arranged the bread on the rack.
"He wanted to be the present the Easter Bunny had brought His friends," she said.
Jolena couldn't find any reason to disagree.
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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Copyright © 2021, 2024 by Peggy Stuart
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