Inklings // August 2025 (Eight Cousins)

The prompt for August’s Inklings link-up (check out Heidi’s post here for the rules to link up!) is a breadmaking scene in book or film. For some reason I had an extraordinarily hard time thinking of breadmaking scenes, and the one I finally hit on features the finished loaf of bread rather than its being made, but hopefully that’s close enough.

This scene is from Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott. Rose wants to be better educated in the domestic arts, and has been learning to cook under her Aunt Plenty’s tutelage.

It was some time before the perfect loaf appeared, for bread making is an art not easily learned, and Aunt Plenty was very thorough in her teaching; so Rose studied yeast first, and through various stages of cake and biscuit came at last to the crowning glory of the “handsome, wholesome loaf.” It appeared at teatime on a silver salver, proudly borne in by Phebe, who could not refrain from whispering, with a beaming face, as she set it down before Dr. Alec, “Ain’t it just lovely, sir?”
“It is a regularly splendid load! Did my girl make it all herself?” he asked, surveying the shapely, sweet-smelling object with real interest and pleasure.
“Every particle herself and never asked a bit of help or advice from anyone,” answered Aunt Plenty, folding her hands with an air of unmitigated satisfaction, for her pupil certainly did her great credit.
“I’ve had so many failures and troubles that I really thought I never should be able to do it alone. Debby let one splendid batch burn up because I forgot it. She was there and smelled it but never did a thing, for she said when I undertook to bake bread I must give my whole mind to it. Wasn’t it hard? She might have called me, at least,” said Rose, recollecting with a sigh the anguish of that moment.
“She meant that you should learn from experience, as Rosamond did in that little affair of the purple jar, you remember.”
“I always thought it very unfair in her mother not to warn the poor thing a little bit, and she was regularly mean when Rosamond asked for a bowl to put the purple stuff in and she said, in such a provoking way, ‘I did not agree to lend you a bowl, but I will, my dear.’ Ugh! I always want to shake that hateful woman, though she was a moral mamma.”
“Never mind her now, but tell me about my loaf,” said Dr. Alec, much amused at Rose’s burst of indignation.
“There’s nothing to tell, Uncle, except that I did my best, gave my mind to it, and sat watching over it all the while it was in the oven till I was quite baked, myself. Everything went right this time, and it came out a nice, round, crusty loaf, as you see. Now taste it and tell me if it is good as well as handsome.”

I must say I’m on Rose’s side here – I don’t care what Uncle Alec says, I would be highly annoyed if someone knew my bread was burning and didn’t even tell me!

Have you read Eight Cousins? Do you have any amusing/edifying breadmaking anecdotes?