Protecting the Sponge

How many pounds of iron-hard corsair muscle did it take to keep twenty quarts of yeast from getting bruised?

Ruatara planted his bare soles against the galley’s wet cedar planks and spread his toes until they found the seams between the deck boards. Beneath his feet, the deep ribs of The Paoa shuddered under the cross-swell of the Great Narrows. Above him, on the sunlit upper deck, the lookout bell clanged three rapid beats. Captain Vaka’s war frigate, the Akaroa, had cut its anchor lines and was sliding down the volcanic channel with the current.

"Twelve minutes on the volatile threshold," Tane called out from the flour bin, his slate tablet clacking against his belt buckle. "If the temperature of that infusion drops below seventy degrees before it hits the gluten mesh, the sugar crystals will shatter the cell walls."

"Keep your voice down, miller," Ruatara muttered without looking up. "You’ll startle the foam. Sourdough has ears."

Ariki set the wide basalt bowl on the center table with the delicacy of an archivist handling dry parchment. The warm emulsion of volcanic vanilla, cane sugar, and sour whey glowed with a faint, amber luminescence, sending up thick ribbons of sweet, buttery steam that cut clean through the galley's sour tang.

Ruatara rolled his linen sleeves past his scarred elbows. His hands were broad, calloused slabs that had snapped iron prybars and hauled heavy halyards through three seasons of raids, but when he lowered them toward the open trough, his wrists went loose and fluid.

In the long wooden trough rested thirty pounds of live sponge, fed an hour earlier from Ariki's cooled Cask Three. It breathed in slow, pale mounds, its surface bubbling with thousands of fragile pockets of carbon dioxide.

"Pour on the quarter-turn," Ruatara said softly. "Slowly, Hani. Do not splash the center."

Hani tilted the basalt bowl, tipping a steady, dark amber stream along the inner edge of the cedar wood.

Ruatara slid his broad palms under the wet mass. Instead of tearing into the dough with the brutal heel-strikes he used for daily hardtack, he cupped the living sponge from below, lifting the outer edge and draping it across the center in a wide, sweeping roll. The amber glaze folded into the pale dough, streaking the ivory surface with swirls of bronze and gold.

A dull groan traveled through the hull plates. Outside, a rogue surge generated by the Akaroa’s approaching displacement hit The Paoa’s port flank. The galleon pitched hard to the right, the galley tilting at a sickening fifteen-degree angle.

Copper ladles swung wildly on their overhead hooks. A bucket of scrub water slid three feet across the floorboards, splashing gray brine against the lower oven skirts.

"The racks!" Ariki shouted, lunging to grab the swinging oil lamps before the burning tallow could spill.

On the starboard bulkhead, the three-tiered proofing rack—holding three wide cedar boxes of rising brioche dough—groaned on its pivot bolts. The heavy cedar frames began to tilt, threatening to dump eighty pounds of delicate, expanding sponge across the salt-stained deck.

Ruatara did not reach with his hands. Hands were for dough, and lifting them now would rip the unworked gluten strands.

He drove his left shoulder hard into the upright support timber of the proofing rack, wedging his massive torso between the shuddering wood and the galleon's oak ribs. His shoulder muscles bunched against the heavy frame, locking it flush against the wall. With his right hip pinned to the center table and his hands still cradling the dough trough, he absorbed the full rolling impact of the five-hundred-ton ship through his spine.

The galleon rolled back toward the port side with a violent snap. The sea hissed outside the portholes, spraying white foam against the thick glass.

Ruatara held his breath. The veins along his neck stood out like ship's cordage as he took the counter-shock through his knees, keeping his forearms completely level. Inside the trough, the golden ribbons of vanilla settled into the dough without a single splash. Not a single gas pocket ruptured.

A crisp chime rang in the center of his vision.

Ruatara let out a slow hiss through his teeth, his shoulder burning against the hard grain of the upright timber.

"Is the sponge alive?" Hani asked from behind the flour bins, her fingers clinging tightly to the ladder rung.

Ruatara lifted his flour-dusted palms from the trough. The dough sat in a smooth, gleaming dome, tinted pale amber and glowing with a soft, warm hue. The sweet fragrance of island vanilla and toasted molasses filled the cramped galley, instantly dampening the sharp tang of sweat and damp bilges.

"It is more than alive," Ruatara said, rolling his stiff neck until the joints popped. "It is resting. Tane, rake the coals in Hearth Two. We have six minutes before these loaves need the high heat."

"The coals are banked to four hundred degrees," Tane replied, shutting the lower draft damper with an iron hook. "Flue velocity is stable. But Ruatara—look at the deck prisms."

Above their heads, the thick glass prisms embedded in the ceiling darkened as a massive shadow drifted across the sun.

A thunderous scrape of ironwood against oak echoed through the timbers. Outside the starboard hull, the sheer wall of Captain Vaka’s war frigate ground against The Paoa’s protective fenders with a deafening screech.

Heavy thuds rattled the upper deck planks as four-pronged iron grappling hooks crashed across the bulwarks, their barbed flukes biting deep into the rail. Boots pounded against the deck overhead, accompanied by the harsh clatter of cutlasses leaving scabbards and the desperate shouts of starving men.

Ruatara wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, stepped in front of the warm proofing racks, and picked up the five-foot ash-wood dough paddle from the wall rack.

The war had arrived at the bakery door, and the bread was not yet out of the oven.