Let's Start A Bakery!

Chapter 29

I checked on the bread by lifting the cloth a little to see how much it had risen. The ball of dough nearly doubled in size in the time I left it to rise.

I sprinkled some flour on the countertop and scraped the dough out. I started kneading the dough again and shaped it into a round loaf.

Alina took out a pot that looked like a Dutch oven, but apparently had no name and was simply referred to as a pot used to bake bread.

Makes sense, the Dutch don't even exist here.

Fortunately, after a lot of back and forth talking, Alina finally allowed me to use a razor to cut a pattern on the top of the bread, but only under her close supervision. She didn't allow me to put the bread in the oven either, nor would she let me try and preheat it with the magic stones. Instead, I watched everything she did in close detail, ingrained each step of starting the oven with magic stones and the location of the Dutch oven in case I decided to take another late night trip to the kitchen in the future.

I used the razor to slice lines into the loaf of bread that closely resembled the shape of leaves and vines.

Alina nervously hovered over me, watching me as I worked.

"Alright I'm finished," I said, and I set down the razor on the counter.

Alina immediately snatched it up and rinsed it off in the sink, carefully drying it with a towel and putting it away in a drawer.

She carefully lifted the dough and placed it onto some parchment paper. How parchment paper even existed in this world, I have no idea, but I just chalked it up to magic and stopped thinking about it too much.

Alina then lifted the paper with the bread in it and gently lowered it down into the Dutch oven, before taking a pair of thick oven mitts and placing the pot into the waiting oven.

"Alina, would you like to join me and my siblings as well?" I asked.

"Pardon!?" she exclaimed, shocked that I would ask.

"Well, you did help me with the limeade and the bread, so I think you deserve to taste it too."

"B-but, it wouldn't be very proper of me to eat with you, Lady Corvalia!"

"Don't worry!" I replied cheerfully, "My teacher, Sir Leonard is eating with us as well."

I didn't wait for her to start speaking again, "So it's settled then, you will join us for tea! Don't worry, there's more than enough chairs to go around!"

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Fun Fact: A Dutch oven is used for baking bread, and it looks like a generic pot with a lid. Nowadays, it can come in a lot of colors, but back then, it most likely would have just been black.