Picture via http://mideastfood.com
Full house at Shrewsday Mansions: everyone from two families was over for after-school dinner, and as usual I was running late. Kids were everywhere, carting around cats, brandishing toy cars, doing homework about adjectives. My sister and I sat at the centre of the maelstrom with mugs of tea.
On the menu today: pizza. The breadmaker had been whirring and clunking like a disgruntled gnome in the corner of the kitchen for one and a half hours now.
I opened the breadmaker.
And there, glowering inside, was the creature from the Black Lagoon.
Minus the black lagoon. In colour this was an exemplary dough; pale, wheaten; something that the Covent Garden Vegan Cranks team would have saluted with some veneration.
But nothing could prepare me for its malignant mien. It had- how shall I put it – personhood. It would have sent even the most zealous wholefoods preacher backing away in the direction of the door.
As I reached in to retrieve it, it adhered sinisterly to the normally non-stick surface. How did it do that? It clung on with unnerving adhesion, like something out of those rather graphic Alien films.
And when my fingers went in to retrieve it, the full horror of the situation became apparent as it closed inexorably round them. It oozed into every crevice of my hands, in a claustrophobic takeover bid. This was no shy retiring violet, this dough. It was giving off vibes which were unmistakably malevolent.
In mild panic I observed to my sister that it might be alive.
She did not help. Instead, she dissolved into giggles as she watched me wrestle with this dough like Hercules wrestling the serpent river god Achelous. It began to dawn on me that mankind was in trouble if this was where Evolution was headed.
With a lot of flour and strenuous physical exertion we began to tame the beast. But for a creature the size of a small hedgehog, it had taken its toll on two great burly humans.
Later, as we devoured our trophy with something akin to spite, it occurred to me that perhaps this was where one of our most baffling ancient traditions began: with the conviction that a piece of dough could be pure evil.
In 1906, in a small Herefordshire village called Ratlinghope, a farmer was buried in the churchyard.
The inscription on his gravestone was perplexing.
“I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes or in our meadows. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.”
Soul pawning. Richard Munslow had lost three of his children with whooping-cough and chose to spend the bereaved years of his life buying passage for others into the afterlife.
He was the last of the sin-eaters.
The strange notion that a loaf of bread, passed over the body of a dead person, could assume the unfinished business, the unresolved sins, or the departed: it persisted in parts of England from the dark ages until the dawning years of the twentieth century.
Once the bread held the sins, someone had to eat them.
And that person was often an outcast, because if they ate the sins of the village, it followed they must be haunted by evil spirits.
They lived apart, shunned, a passport to the afterlife and yet abhorred and feared much as we abhor our own transgressions.
And the instrument for the transfer was a loaf of bread.
So maybe there was something in my unease, hands swamped by killer dough as if extras in a ’50’s movie. Maybe a batsqueak of a social memory endured.
Or maybe I should just lay off the olive oil.
Kate Shrewsday 
Seems to me a rolling pin, properly applied, would subdue the doughy beast.
I remember a piece of graffiti which made it all clear ” Life is just a shit sandwich – the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat”.
Sounds as if it would have been a perfect Quatermass prop.
I didn’t get this to begin with and thought you’d found a creature of some sort in the breadmaker – argh!
You never cease to amaze!
Another custom I wotted not of. Dough is the root of all evil? Making dough is certainly a driving force in society – everyone is convinced they knead it. Perhaps this is an example of a baking demon-stration?
You find the oddest nuggets of information, and the scariest monsters!
Bread has long had social significance, it is life after all. 🙂
And the dough riseth and doth strike out at fair maidens.Be careful not to loaf as you tame the beast. Fun start to the day.
My bread machine sits forlorn in the loft. I never quite got the hang of it.
oh, Tilly!
(I’m on my second!)
I suggest wine next time. Not for the dough but for the pizza makers!
You have RISEN to new heights with this post, Kate. Absolutely loved:
* This was no shy retiring violet, this dough. It was giving off vibes which were unmistakably malevolent.
* With a lot of flour and strenuous physical exertion we began to tame the beast. But for a creature the size of a small hedgehog, it had taken its toll . . .
On wet days, a bit more flour into the mix creates a better behaved dough. Of course, if YOUR dough had behaved . . . we would have missed out on this YEASTY post. Thanks for the giggles.
Mangia!
Give us this day our daily … monster? Monstrance? Too much of a stretch, I guess.
I like the “disgruntled gnome” image. The creature from the Black Lagoon was misunderstood and mistreated. He was just in love with this lady in a 1950’s one-piece bathing suit and they poisoned him. But maybe this dough was truly malign.
Oh, well, today is election day in this colony. Lots and lots of dough has been spent on it by the two big political parties. We will be casting our bread upon the waters. I voted early on Oct. 22 in my little city hall. Others will not have it so easy.
The idea of “sin eating” is fascinating. The way I eat is a sin, but how do you eat that?
Ah, I’ve had bread dough that has taken on a life of it’s own. I’ve also had dough as dead as a doornail. Another rousing post, Kate. However do you do it?
Blimey, Kate… possessed dough!
I made a loaf like that once, though. Gives you an idea of where the house brick evolved from…
Dear Kate, I’m not assuming the sins of others when I gobble bread, but I certainly am adding to my own girth! Peace.
So, THAT’S why I can’t tolerate gluten.
I hate to be kneady … but, if I have to be the sacrificial bread eater, could it please be baguettes?
I don’t know what you could have done to your dough…or what could have taken it over, perhaps? But I have never heard of “sin eaters” before but it’s a very troubling thought! I can’t imagine what could drive a person to that kind of penance…perhaps the loss of three children. So tragic, and yet odd! What a story, Kate. I hope the pizza turned out alright somehow! 🙂
Ha, almost Hitchcockian Kate! At first I thought the vole had returned 🙂
I couldn’t resist
Oh how I wish I could have seen this 🙂 Right now I’m feeling very blessed to have to eat gluten free … tee hee