I take into accounts Mr. and Mrs. Robert Maus masses. They’ve been our jolly German-born neighbors who lived correct subsequent door to our residence at 86 Elm Place. Retired bakers, having provided their worthwhile bakery in Newark, New Jersey, they’ve been one thing nonetheless retired from their art work. Nonetheless enamored of flour and sugar and butter and cream and up to date and dried fruits and nuts, they transformed, little by little, their concrete-floored basement proper right into a mini mannequin of their former expert premises. Wooden tables, fat legged and sturdy, had unpainted tops which have been silken and clear to the contact, reflecting years and years of kneading doughs and rolling pastries. The ovens weren’t like ours next-door, small gasoline wall fashions which may barely keep a twenty-five-pound turkey, nonetheless huge “expert” ranges, black with age. The bottom felt as mild as a result of the tops of the work tables, completely the outcomes of flour and sugar sanding its flooring yr after yr.
And although from my perspective—that of a youthful infant—each little factor appeared larger than life, my mother assures me that each little factor was larger than I was used to, starting with the Mauses themselves. They weren’t like one other acquaintances. I always thought-about them as fairytale characters, merely as the youngsters’s author Maurice Sendak envisions the bakers in his well-known information “Inside the Night time time Kitchen.”
Although retired, the Mauses baked as in the event that they’d shoppers lined up on the doorway door. They’ve been always experimenting and trying new recipes and ideas, using age-old strategies that they’d acquired in Germany, the place they’d apprenticed under a “pure” grasp baker who used solely the proper parts, with fabulous outcomes. Thus the Danish pastries that emerged from these big ovens on full sheet pans, dented and blackened throughout the perimeters from a number of years of use, have been delicate and flaky, and filled with sweet apricots and prunes and apples, not out of cans, nonetheless current and plump.
There have been no mixers throughout the basement bakery: All of the issues was stirred and kneaded and blended by hand. Mr. Maus would inform me again and again that that was why his muffins have been lighter, his breads elevated, his lotions fluffier, and his pastries flakier. To nowadays I take into account him, and use his instructions after I bake or cook dinner dinner. His yeast doughs would rise throughout the enveloping warmth of the huge oil furnace that heated his residence. He used big yellowware bowls that Mrs. Maus lovingly cared for—there have been no cracks or chips in these bowls. Skinny, well-washed linen towels have been used to cowl the doughs, and pans of water have been positioned proper right here and there throughout the cellar to create the “humidity” that Mr. Maus knew was vital to the tenderness of a beautiful yeast bread. His rolling pins have been immense—longer and better than any I had ever seen, and after I, as a youthful housewife, was searching for my very personal baking devices, I regarded for the same kinds of metallic pans and heavy tin molds and large wooden rolling pins that the Mauses used. I nonetheless have and cherish definitely one among their yellowware bowls, which I exploit for rising my mother’s babka dough.
Possibly most likely probably the most memorable of the Mauses’ recipes, and one which we nonetheless use in our family, is that this fruitcake recipe. It’s rich and heavy and darkish. You’ll need to make use of the best-quality dried fruits and candied fruits you’ll uncover; I spend a day merely gathering parts for my fruitcake-baking day. Then each little factor should be chopped by hand, pans and tins should be lined with buttered brown paper or heavy waxed paper, and the muffins should be baked for about three and a half hours in a bain-marie.
Right here is the recipe, foolproof, a Christmas current to you from me and Mr. and Mrs. Maus. Keep in mind, bake this cake immediately—it’ll get increased with age.