The Sourdough Wars

sponge.” He plunged a fist into it and so did I. It felt wonderful.
    “There’s lots more of those.” In the next room, there were six or eight troughs, each about twelve feet long, and most weren’t divided, so a hunk of dough about the size of a couple of large men could repose in each one. I was in heaven.
    “They’re going to mix a batch now. But first, look over there—those are dividers.” The dividers were machines into which hunks of dough were being fed and cut into the round balls I’d seen on the first floor.
    “Feel anything?” asked Tony.
    “I think it’s an earthquake.” The floor was moving beneath my feet. A repeated loud thudding was going on in the mixer. The machine itself shook like a berserk washing machine. A little sign on it identified it as a product of the Triumph Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. I hoped the Triumph folks had done proper road tests; I was pretty sure the thing was about to fly apart. “Watch now. They’re going to take the dough out.”
    A baker opened the mixer and the shaking stopped. Hunks of dough as big as loaves splattered over the outside of the thing. Inside, a mean-looking blade slowed and a mammoth wad of dough dropped into a trough set below the mixer door.
    “Here goes the new batch.” The mixer had two compartments, like a stove with two ovens. The same baker opened the other door, and I saw that the second compartment had flour in it. Two men cut a troughful of dough into armfuls and shoved them in, letting them deflate like balloons. Then they closed up the mixer and the shaking and thudding began again.
    “Very impressive,” I said. “And where do you put in the secret ingredient?”
    Tony led me into another room, with nothing in it but troughs, most empty, but some delectably full. “It’s a secret, of course.”
    I let him have it. “I know where it is, Tony. It’s in the sponge, isn’t it? It’s been there a long time—ever since you stole the Martinelli starter.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I got your license number the night you stole the control batch.” I paused a moment for effect and then recited the number Rob had gotten for me that morning. “Five One Five WIN.”
    I was watching his eyes, not his hands. So imagine my surprise when I felt something hit my chest and then I sank down, down, deliciously down onto a twelve-foot pillow of sourdough. The dough was wonderfully fragrant as it closed over my face.
    I admit it felt good, being in there. I even admit I’d had a brief fantasy of throwing myself into one of the troughs. But I’d never have done it in my best black suit.
    And not if I’d known I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I had to get the dough off my face. I raised my arms, and pulled at it, but the more dough I pulled off, the more slid back on. I opened my mouth to yell—and got a mouthful of dough. I started to cough, then panicked, clawing at my face.
    And then I felt someone lifting me out. When I was righted, standing goo-covered in goo-covered shoes, my rescuer was still holding on to my arms—and a good thing, too, as otherwise I believe I’d have slugged Tony Tosi. The Good Samaritan was a baker, who looked quizzically at Tony, then at me, and walked away as if whatever happened next wasn’t any of his business.
    When I’d gotten done coughing and looked at Tony, the urge to slug him left me. His eyes weren’t wild, as I’d imagined they would be, but infinitely sad. “I… don’t know what to say,” he muttered. “I just lost control.”
    An elderly woman, crooning in Italian, led me to a bathroom with a shower.
    * * *
    My hair dripping, wearing the white uniform of a lady baker twice my size, I marched back into Tony’s office and threw my ruined suit on his knee-deep tan rug. I was furious about that suit.
    “I didn’t do it,” he said, before I had time to voice the eight or nine unpleasant things I had on my mind. Things like criminal charges, civil suits, dough-covered suits, possible injury, and ruined dignity.
    “What do you mean you didn’t do it, you schmuck? I suppose you nearly killed me to show how wrong I was.”
    “Okay, okay. Calm down.” He raised the hand with the Rolex on the wrist, not looking as if he expected results. But I let him talk. “Look, I took the starter a couple of years ago, all right?”
    I sat down, mollified.
    “But I didn’t take the second batch.”
    “I saw you, Tony. Remember?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.