On The Microtragedy of Baked Goods With Insufficient Salt

It is perhaps strange for my inaugural blog post to be about something so drearily commonplace as undersalted baked goods. But I suppose it is as introductory as anything to say what I am thinking about at this the inaugural moment.

It is a small tragedy when otherwise delightful and well-constructed baked goods contain insufficient salt. Some time ago I was eating pumpkin bread of a gorgeous russet color and tender, rich crumb. The bread, while spiced well and baked to perfection, was a total waste. The flavor was bland and indistinct, the sweetness unchecked. The spices I saw suspended in the matrix registered only fleetingly and furtively, incapable of acting to half their potential. The loaf probably had inherent in it a great depth of flavor which I could not access for the lack of salt.

In elementary school, I was assigned to participate in "Junior Great Books," a sort of excuse for a gifted-and-talented program. One selection was a working of a fairy tale. It involved a king who, in a fit of unchecked narcissism, asked his daughters how much they loved him. Each answered in turn: "more than all the jewels in the world," "more than life itself," and the like, until it was the youngest's turn; this wise lass replied: "I love you more than meat loves salt." The fair ingenue is banished to work in a distant kingdom as a scullery maid.* Eventually she is brought to the castle on the night of a feast to help with the cooking, and, no longer 'artless,' ensures that all the food lacks salt. The king, repulsed by the disingenuous blandness of the splendorous feast, realizes his great wickedness and sends for his ever-loving daughter. They are reunited, and l.h.e.a.

The third-grade discussion was respectable, but even then I looked around the group with meta-eyes. Of course the children hated the story. Here they were made to read an over-long recitation of a stuffy, obscure fairy tale which relied on geriatric, questionable-at-best metaphors. My classmates did say appropriately insightful things, like "it's not just the taste thing, yuck, but, like they didn't have fridges, and meat would rot and stuff." But ultimately we were just saying what we knew we had to before we could be dismissed. In my own corner of the third-grade circle, I saw the discussion as another application of the story's metaphor; we knew there must be something to the tale, else why was it a "Great Book"?, but we didn't care, so we were instead cynical of it and banished it from our fondnesses. But what is meat without a little salt, and life without some thoughtful metaphors and far-fetched storytalk?

Our meat no longer rots without salt (props to Alexander Twining), and I don't think our pumpkin bread is endangered by maggots anyway. But it is this sense of half-capacity that I get from the loaf, the squandered opportunity, the ingredients that were used but not quite utilized-- that is the micro-tragedy. It is microtragic, too, that there are bakers out there who otherwise perfect their craft and never venture to give another shake from the shaker. Were I to love somebody "as [meat] loves salt," I would speak of their ability to make me live and feel to capacity, their way of making the flavors sometimes dormant in my character shine. And that would be a true love.


*I've loved the term "scullery maid" ever since, and use it as a mental self-descriptor when doing roommates' dishes sans charitable intent.

Salt shaker painting from jeffhayesfineart.blogspot.com-- the man creates a painting every day. I respect that.