Sandwich Generation

I don’t usually chew over the last thing I wrote about, but I’ve been thinking about that sausage sandwich ever since I mentioned it last week, and I needed to get it out of my system so I could think about something else.

I so badly wanted to literally chew it over, that I made it, and I ate it:

To do this I had to bake a very specific kind of loaf, which I don’t put on my menus any more: a soft white tin. This was on my first menu in September 2018, and I used to sell it every week. I realised this week, that in the slow evolution of my business, and my commitment to the alchemy of sourdough, I haven’t put this simple yeasted loaf on my menu for years. Sometimes nothing else will do though.

This is not a very fashionable thing to say as a sourdough baker, and someone who values wholegrains, and soaking seeds, and choosing plump oats, and sourcing regenerative flour and what have you, but I could write a long love letter about soft white bread; bread with literally no fibre in it whatsoever.

It’s soft white bread that kept me alive from 1991-1996. The meagre calories I could extract from the diabolical school meals I had three times a day as a school boarder were so unacceptably low, that if it weren’t for the plastic loaves of bread slung at the bottom of the table every meal, I would have faded away like a Victorian waif.

There is another reason though that I chose to bake yeasted loaves this Wednesday, instead of my usual sourdough, and that’s because I knew I needed to take Mum to an appointment on Tuesday. This might have involved 3 hours of sitting in a waiting room, or it might not have; either way it was unpredictable, and I probably wouldn’t have had enough hours in the school day to mix and fold and divide and shape the sourdough to bake on Wednesday. 

I might have enough time isn’t good enough when you’re asking people to pay upfront.

And this is how it goes every week: Every Sunday I plan my menu based on the complicated and ever-changing priorities in my life. I’m sure many of you are the same, particularly, I’d venture, if you’re about my age.

If I think about it, I have a list of subconscious questions and gut instincts I have to answer and judge every Sunday, in order to plan the menu I send out the next day:

Is anyone ill? Do they look like they might be?

Does Mum have an appointment?

Does anyone need to go to the doctor?

Can Steve do any of the school runs this week?

Does anyone have a music exam, or a school concert, or an open afternoon?

Does anyone have a particular craving? (You can’t have a baker for a Mum without being able to lodge requests)

And then there are the things that I can't plan for, that spring up during the baking week when I've already committed to the orders. I need to leave a little bit of leeway to tend to the unexpected, which happens on average about once a month, but for the last few months there has been a curveball I’ve had to catch with one hand every single week. I am longing for a week that just runs like clockwork.

So every loaf is there on the menu for a reason. Maybe it’s that I have a craving for a sausage sandwich to mark a period of my life that is full of love and value, in contrast to being cold-heartedly dumped as a younger woman. Or maybe it’s that I need to clear space in my diary for an indeterminate wait in a hospital waiting room. Or a bit of both.

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I looked up the Sevenoaks census data this week. I was trying to work out if I've baked a loaf of bread per member of the local population. I haven't. I had grossly underestimated the population! It’s 120,000! I have baked a loaf for the equivalent of 1 in 7 of the people who live in Sevenoaks. That’s still pretty cool I reckon, and I’m still going, so I’ll get to the equivalent of everyone at some point.

I noted with interest that the median age of a Sevenoaks resident is 43-44, which is exactly my age. When I walk down the street, half the people I pass are younger than me, and half are older, and that is exactly how I feel. Right in the middle, with pulls on the heartstrings from above and below.

Mum told me that I’m in the sandwich generation, and I like that analogy. Our parents and our children are the bread above and below us, and we are the filling that binds the slices together.

I feel it's a privileged place to be, the filling of the sandwich. I do sometimes feel overwhelmed by it, and have to phone it in a bit in my care of my family (let’s say this is me being the equivalent of a hastily prepared jam sandwich filling, but at least it’s something on the table). But sometimes I manage to be all mozzarella and parma ham and sundried tomatoes and fresh green leaves with a light vinaigrette, and I do a good job and solve a crisis, or provide reassurance, or make someone laugh when they had been feeling sad. I drop the curveball sometimes, but I am trying my damned hardest.

Either way, I treasure the time with all these people in my life, even if it is in a waiting room. If there’s one thing I have in spades as a member of the sandwich generation, it’s purpose.

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I had a dream this week that I had picked up the key to a shop in Sevenoaks for my bakery. It wasn't on a street that actually exists in Sevenoaks; it was a street created by my sleeping mind. It was a stone building, in a courtyard, and I was standing in the courtyard telling someone invisible about the outside seating I'd put there, and feeling simultaneously dizzy and sick, and giddy with the thrill of finally having my own shop.

It was nice to inhabit that dream world for a little bit, and it has replayed on a slow daydream loop in my quieter moments as I’ve been shaping this week’s loaves. It was nice to inhabit a world with no curveballs, and only the potential of a big key in my hand (I like that in my dream it was a huge cast iron key like for a medieval castle).

It’s not the world I live in right now, but that’s ok.