tolkienshortfanworks | Greatest of Feasts, by StarSpray

Author: StarSpray

Title: Greatest of Feasts

Characters: Smith, Alf, Harper

Pairing: n/a

Text type / Format: not fixed length ficlet

Source / Fandom: Smith of Wootton-Major

Rating: G

Warnings: n/a

Word Count: 271

Summary: The Master Cooks of Wootton-Major were of course best known for their cakes, but even as an apprentice Alf had made a name for himself with bread.
Author notes: Written for the bread prompt, and also for Tolkien Ekphrasis Week 2024 for the prompt: Culinary Arts

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” - James Beard

The Master Cooks of Wootton-Major were of course best known for their cakes, but even as an apprentice Alf had made a name for himself with bread. No one who passed by his kitchens while the bread was baking did not stop and inhale deeply, appreciating the rich scents that promised warmth and comfort. There was nothing like a slice of Alf ’s bread fresh from the oven, butter still melting into the crumb. He made round loaves and long loaves and braided loaves, rich and tangy sourdough, and round rolls light as clouds and matchless for soaking up the remnants of a soup or a stew. Children lined up on Saturday afternoons for sweet rolls filled with sugar and cinnamon and bits of dried fruit.

No one knew his secrets, except perhaps Harper—but though he was a very respectable cook and feast-maker in his own right, he could not quite compare to his master in the matter of baking. After Alf departed a whisper went about that he was one of the fairy folk, and that all his foods held enchantments. Harper only laughed when asked about it, and so the whisper remained only rumor, eventually forgotten as Alf himself faded from local memory into local legend.

Smith, though, smiled and remembered both a marvelous cake with a secret and enchanted gift inside, and hard-crusted rolls he had taken on his journeys, tucked carefully into his pockets or pack, and how they had never once gone stale.