I’m watching the dough machine spin and I’m listening to it hum and click. It gets into a rhythm you want to listen for when the dough’s close to done. Another second and it’ll be ready. Then I’ll shut the machine off and pull it.
When I was a kid watching the pizza guys do the dough, they warned me repeatedly, Don’t stick your arm in there, thing’ll tear it clear off and won’t skip a beat. They said this right before they’d stick a hand in to test it. Poke at the dough to tell, by feel and give, if it was ready. I’d tried to picture it when they told me this, when I was standing there, debating if I should try later when no one was watching. Where would it tear exactly? I was tempted. Ten, twelve years old. A game in my head like the kids that walked further and further out on the iced-over Danvers River. Then poking the dough was part of the job.
If you were here now, and I was showing you, I’d say the same thing. It’s a part of it and you’ve got to understand that it won’t stop. Thing’ll take your arm off. You have to watch the dough and the dough hook to time it out and poke it to check. You have to stick your hand in quickly at the right time, and there’s not a long window, to get a good feel and pull back before the hook comes around again and rips you in.
Sunday morning after another Sunday morning after twenty-something years—total—of Sundays. I missed a few. But I always liked them.
It was always Sunday morning.
I’m watching a dough ball twist around the steel mixing hook and back into itself and I’m talking to myself. The big mixer hums when it’s running.
Sometimes I said the Our Father because I like what it asks for and feel guilty often. It works well with timing out the checks. Singing or humming to myself helps, too. I wish I had a good voice. All the practice. Cowboy of the dough machine. The 00 Caputo flour blues. I used to hate it, then I loved it. Living in a place, stealing lines from songs like they’re mine and I was the one that wrote them and this is what they’re about.
All my favorite songs, I don’t know the words exactly for some reason. I’m always off a simple word or two. That, the, on the line, on the mind, will it grow, where it goes.
There’s a slight scrape and click of hook on bowl. The stainless steel squeak. The humidity and the weight of the dough. Fifty pounds flour, some measure of water (can’t tell you everything here—this is a good dough recipe—the best in town—the BEST PIZZA IN SALEM since 1979), and oil, yeast, salt, sugar.
One of the times it was getting tuned up, the repairman said that it’d just keep happening because it’s a pastry dough mixer. The mixer’s not for pizza dough. The old owner, my dad’s first boss, cheaped out and it stayed because it’s always been here. Good pizza needs its system to stay consistent and age.
I hum a slow tune. I’m slowing this one song down in my head to fit the rhythm I need to match the tempo of the mixer’s ticking. Help time out the last check. It looks ready. If it is, stop the machine, lower the bowl, slice the dough off the hook. Pull it, cut it, and knead it.
Which I do.
Grab a stack of dough trays from out back. To start cutting and weighing the dough into smalls and larges, sometimes tapping the knife on the stainless table, carrying the click over through this part of the whole thing. I space out and I’m on the other side of the batch. The dough balls all lined up in the trays to proof, ready for the walk-in. Rotate the trays, first in first out. But right now, I’m just starting.
I used to look for signs in the things I saw every day. Something was going to tell me something.
I looked for signs in anything I could say might mean something. I’d see something and say, Wouldn’t it be perfect if x, y, or z happens, if I get good news in the next ten minutes? Because I saw a hawk light on a low branch, I’d scratch the last number I needed. A seagull flying and holding onto a whole cheeseburger told me to go play Keno. I thought the things that I saw and thought were signs would make a great story.
Or maybe the sign would be instructive. Something that said, This is what you should want and if you do you’ll get it and be happy with it.
I wanted to learn how to see I’ve been told something. Something you could not mistake. Then after a while, nothing’s happened and you think anything could be something. Because it’s hard to know objectively. Then you listen too hard. Interpret too much. Stretch something into another meaning.
I talk to myself in my head when I’m folding dough into a smooth globe in my hands.
