“The Summer Festival’s been running since 1962. Birdie Kowalski has won the bake-off eleven years running, which is objectively offensive, and the whole town turns out for it.Booths, music, the guy who brings his accordion even though nobody asked. It’s the thing.:
I set down my rolling pin. I wipe my hand on my apron. Somewhere under my ribs, the part of me that used to plate tasting menus in Austin is laughing.
“I didn’t agree to this,” I manage.
“I know.” She has the decency to look apologetic. She also has the nerve to look pleased. “Edna would’ve wanted you there. And between you and me, the town’s been taking bets that you’ll smoke Birdie. I’d like my bet to win.”
She pats my flour-dusted cheek and sails out before I can mount a defense, the bell jangling her victory in her wake.
I stare at the flyer. The cartoon moose smiles back at me like a co-conspirator.
From his sunny square of floor, Jasper watches. He thumps his tail once.
"Fine," I tell him. "Fine. We’re doing this."
He thumps his tail once, which I choose to read as encouragement.
It’s competition day and the moment I see the ingredient list, I understand I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Local Alaskan ingredients only, the festival program announces in cheerful sans-serif. I stand under the outdoor competition tent, reading this sentence over and over like it might change if I concentrate hard enough. Fireweed honey. Spruce tips. Salmon, for those demented enough to enter baking categories with fish. Nothing from my carefully packed travel case. Nothing from anything I’ve ever trained in.
My hands are starting to shake. Not yet visibly, but I can feel it happening inside my chest—that little flutter of panic when you realize your entire skill set is about to become useless.
Around me, other competitors are nodding like this is information they already possessed, like they woke up this morning and thought, “Yes, local Alaskan ingredients, naturally.” Birdie Kowalski is three booths down, arranging her prep station with the efficiency of someone who has been baking with blueberries since she could reach a counter. She’s wearing a vintage apron with Chief Pastry Officer embroidered across the front, and I hate her a little.
Her station is already immaculate. She has small glass jars lined up by size. Everything labeled. Everything organized. She moves through the space like a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing, which is the opposite of me, standing here thinking I know what I’m doing in an Alaskan festival bake-off while secretly believing I’m about to publicly fail.
My station is next to the parking lot. Perfect. An audience of people walking past to get to their cars. Prime real estate for humiliation.
Jax Moretti is providing color commentary from the crowd like this is a sporting event, which I discover when he shouts, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Outside Baker takes her position! Let’s see if civilization has prepared her for The Great Alaskan Bake-Off!”
His voice is so loud that three people turn to look. Three strangers are now aware of my imminent failure. Three strangers will watch me crash and burn.
Patrice, three rows back, is laughing so hard that Trace is holding a confused toddler Brooklyn away from her like the laughter is contagious. The toddler is making that confused toddler face—like she’s not sure why her mother is malfunctioning. Trace catches my eye over the kid’s head and gives me a thumbs up, which is either encouragement or a gesture of farewell. I can’t tell which.
“Okay,” I say aloud to no one in particular, unpacking flour that I brought specifically for this which is useless now and setting up my station with the professionalism of someone pretending they know what they’re doing. Which, it turns out, is exactly what I’m doing. I arrange my tools in a neat line---measuring cups, mixing bowls, whisks. All of it calibrated for sea-level baking and now useless.
I’m unpacking my sourdough starter from the cooler when Jace appears next to my booth with an apron on. An apron. White canvas. The sleeves pushed up. The sleeves of his white apron are pushed up. His shoulders fill the space.
I cannot have this thought right now because I have been good about not having this thought since the sourdough lesson, which is a lie---I’ve had this thought constantly, on repeat that plays every time he walks into the bakery—but I have not mentioned it to anyone, which is a victory.
“I’m your helper,” he says. His voice is steady. Like this is normal. Like helping me fail publicly is how he planned to spend his Saturday.
“Great,” I say, which is not great. This is the opposite of great. Having Jace Maddox watch me publicly crash is like having to fail in front of a living reminder of everything I’m not equipped to handle. “I’m doing a sourdough starter,” I add, which is insane. Sourdough requires days. Sourdough requires a living culture, time, temperature control, and a certainty I don’t have about anything in this moment, much less a baking competition in a place where altitude is a personal enemy.
“Three-hour rise time here,” Jace says, not like a criticism but like information. Like he’s telling me a fact. “The altitude throws everything off.”
“I know,” I say, and I do know. I read about it. I prepared for it. I am completely unprepared for it. “I have to try.”
Jace nods like this is a reasonable choice, even though it’s the opposite of reasonable. It’s the choice of a woman who is desperate to prove something to herself and hasn’t figured out yet that sometimes you can’t prove things in three hours of outdoor baking in Alaska.
The competition starts at nine AM, and immediately, nothing works.
The altitude throws off my rise time—I can see it happening in real time, like watching a train derail in slow motion. I’ve mixed the dough correctly. The formula is right. But it’s refusing to rise. The dough is supposed to double in ninety minutes. At an hour and a half, it’s achieved what I can only describe as “a modest expansion program.” I keep opening the warming box and checking it, like if I stare at it hard enough, it will suddenly develop ambition.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat on the table. Bad. Publicly bad. Birdie, from three booths down, keeps producing perfect, beautiful things like she’s not trying at all. The other competitors are making things that look intentional. Meanwhile, my dough is sitting there like a personal insult.
And then Morris appears.