Chapter 5
Gabby
The cast iron beast sits in the center of Sugar & Flour's kitchen like an altar to chaos, and I've been staring at it for twenty minutes while my croissant dough rests in the fridge.
The problem with inherited bakeries is that they come with inherited equipment. Specifically, they come with an oven that appears to have been forged by someone with extremely strong opinions about temperature and no interest in consistency.
Edna named it Lucifer. Looking at it now, I understand why.
My phone alarm chirps. Croissants. Right.
I pull the laminated dough from the fridge—three days of folding and chilling, precise work that calmed my anxiety until this moment—and transfer it to the pastry bench Jace must have left sometime overnight—I found it when I unlocked the bakery this morning, set against the prep wall like it had always been there, solid and exact and the right height for laminated dough.
It's beautiful enough to make my chest tight.
I'm trying not to think about his hands making it.
The technique is all instinct: egg wash, cut into triangles, stretch each one just enough, roll from the base to the point. I've done this five thousand times in Austin. I've done this hungover, sleep-deprived, mid-panic attack about Marco's indiscretions. I can do this.
Except Lucifer has other plans.
I set the oven for 400 degrees—the temperature my notes demand—and slide the sheet in. The croissants look perfect. Even, glossy, with that pristine spiral I know will puff to golden. I set the timer for eighteen minutes.
Twelve minutes in, I smell something.
Not the good smell of butter caramelizing. The smell of butter carbonizing. Burning. Black-ended.
I yank the oven door open. The croissants are charred at the edges like someone held them over a campfire. The interiors are barely baked.
"What the—" I pull them out, stare at them, stare at the oven. The temperature dial says 425. It said 400. I watched it. I'm not losing my mind. Okay, I might be losing my mind, but not about this.
I text Dotty:
Me: Did Edna's oven have a personality disorder?
The reply takes three minutes:
Dotty: Charming sense of humor. Prefers 375. Runs hot.
Runs hot. Fantastic. I have an oven with trust issues and an opinion about optimal temperature.
For the next attempt, I dial it to 365. Dotty said 375, but Dotty hasn't just cremated a full sheet of croissants this morning. I'm going lower. I'm being humble. I'm going to let Lucifer win this round so we can develop a healthier dynamic.
Twenty-two minutes later, the croissants are pale. Barely golden. The butter hasn't really done its thing—they're more bread-adjacent than croissant. Dough felt, texture-wise, like something a toddler would chew on and eventually spit out.
I slide them onto the cooling rack and want to scream. Instead, I scream internally, which is much more professional, and rifle through the walk-in for salvage options.
This is the part of cooking where you pivot. Where you stop pretending the vision will work and start looking at what you have.
There's half a side of salmon in the walk-in—the one Jace left on the cabin porch the other morning.
I'd moved it here when I came in, not sure what I was going to do with it.
I'd been suspicious of it. He doesn't seem like someone who leaves things without reason, and he doesn't seem like someone who wastes anything, so the salmon must mean something.
The salmon is supposed to mean something.
Scones. Savory scones. It's ridiculous. It's desperate. It's the move that either becomes your signature or becomes a story you tell badly at parties.
"Scones," I mutter, grabbing cream and flour and buttermilk. "You're doing scones. Salmon scones. Your brand now. Embrace the chaos."
The scone dough comes together fast—flour, baking powder, salt, cold butter cut into pea-sized pieces with a knife because the food processor is too aggressive, too eager. I work butter into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs, which is chef-speak for "don't overthink it."
The salmon gets flaked into chunks. I fold in fresh dill, a pinch of smoked paprika, some zest from a lemon left in the bowl in the refrigerator. Desperate improvisation.
I add the buttermilk, form the dough on a floured board, cut it into wedges, and get them on the sheet before I lose my nerve.
365 degrees. Lucifer's preference. If he's going to burn my stuff, at least he can be consistent about it.
Fourteen minutes. They rise. They're golden. I pull them out and set one on the cooling rack, waiting for it to cool enough to taste. Steam curls off the top.
The smell is completely different than I expected. Buttery. Herbaceous. The salmon isn't overpowering—it's woven through like a secret.
I wait. Tap my fingers on the counter. Check my phone. Reorganize the cooling racks. Wait more.
After six minutes, I break one open. It's still warm inside, steam rising in a small cloud. The crumb is tender—not too dense, not too light. The salmon is flaky and distinct. The dill is bright. The paprika adds this subtle smoke underneath everything.
I take a bite.
The scone is still warm. The dill stays bright.
The salmon flakes on my tongue like a secret.
Subtle. Integrated. The paprika adds this whisper of smoke at the back, and the lemon zest cuts through everything without making itself obvious about it.
It’s balanced. It’s right. This is what I didn’t know I was looking for.
It’s... actually really good. Good enough to stop chewing for a second and think about your life and also your oven choices.
Good enough to wonder if maybe the thing that ruins your plan is the thing you needed all along.
Good the way redemption tastes: butter, dill, flour that knows what it’s doing.
I stand there holding a warm scone and not eating it, just feeling it, and I think about how long it's been since I made something and felt proud of it instead of defensive about it.
Not proud in the competitive way—not better than anyone else's baking.
Just proud that my hands made something whole.
That I took garbage ingredients and abandonment and an oven with a personality disorder and turned it into something that matters.
The door chimes.
Jace. Of course it's Jace. This is the moment where he walks in and witnesses my chaos because the universe operates according to a script I didn't write.
He's wearing a henley—the kind that's maybe one size too big if you're being polite and two sizes too big if you're being honest. His hair is slightly damp.
There's sawdust in his beard. He looks like he just came from his workshop, which is probably a fifteen-minute walk from here, which means he didn't have to come by but chose to.
Don't read into that.
He stops at the threshold. Eyes moving from me to the racks to the half-eaten scone to the devastation scattered across the counter.
"Rough morning?" he says.
"Lucifer was running hot," I say, which is technically accurate and also sounds insane. "So, I—" I gesture at the scones, at the salmon, at the general crime scene of my attempt to salvage the day. "—improvised."
He walks over to the cooling rack. He doesn't ask. He reaches out and takes a scone—the most intact one, one I was proud of—breaks it in half and brings it to his mouth.
I’m suddenly aware of my hair coming undone at the back, probably floury.
He chews once. Twice. He swallows.
"You improvised salmon scones?" he asks. "Those are interesting."
I stare at him. Then I stare at the half-scone in his hand. Then back at him.
"That's not— you can't just—" I'm talking too fast. This is me talking too fast. This is my nervous voice, the one that comes out when I'm being complimented by someone who isn't backhanding the compliment or adding a "but" or suggesting that I could do better if I tried harder.
"The temperature regulation on that oven is erratic.
It's not a standard commercial model. The brick interior means it's actually radiating heat at inconsistent intervals, which explains the uneven baking on the croissants, but the lower temperature seems to favor moisture retention in the dough structure, which is ideal for scone-type applications because they need that tender crumb, and I didn't add sugar because it's a savory application, though I could try them slightly sweet if you wanted to market them as more of a hybrid—"
I stop. I'm still talking.
Jace takes another bite of the scone.
"The salmon is good," he says. "Keep doing that."
He sets the rest of it on the cooling rack.
His hand is right there, sawdust on his knuckles, the kind that works into the creases when you spend a morning sanding.
His palm is wide. The calluses are rough—I can see them in the light from the front window, running along the edge of his hand, the base of his fingers.
Woodworker hands. Hands that know how to hold something the right way and not let it slip.
I look away. I look at the oven. I look at the scones. I look literally anywhere that isn't at his hands.
"The oven," I say, very brightly, "seems to respond to lower temperatures. I'm wondering if it's the brick type rather than a standard commercial convection, which would explain the thermal differential and the hot spots on the right side where the heat source is probably closer to the—"
"Edna has notes somewhere," he says. "Probably in a drawer."
He's already walking toward the desk, which is unfair because now I'm watching his ass, which is worse than his hands. It's not worse. I'm making it worse. This is fine. Everything is fine.
He opens the top drawer of the built-in desk—the one I've been avoiding because it felt too personal, like I'd be snooping through Edna's life. He pulls out a notebook, leather-bound, worn at the edges.
"This might be it," he says.