baker of bread by trade.

sometimes there are days when you have to make a john barleycorn. or a lugh. 

whichever you please. you've been reading too long about aesthetes at midsummer and throwing pots and finding the lost sang de boeuf glazes of china, you're fairly sure elementals are tittering at the windowsill and darting out of sight. so you plunge your hands into some dough. bread bakers are the potters of the cookeryworld. after all.

you kill him dead and you then make one tiny individual sour-cherry turnover and stand there to munch it contemplatively as you enter the last days of summer. all suspended in amber.

you may not think of gods in the external sense but you think of ancestors and gratitude even though your skin burns and your eyes smart under the sun. then a few drops of gentle rain fall, a good omen.

 One Sour Cherry Turnover.

  cut together four tablespoons of whole wheat pastry flour with a pinch of salt, a larger pinch of sugar, enough cold grated butter and a drop of pure almond extract.

let the dough rest in the icebox while you find a good small spoon.  

roll dough into a thin square. using small spoon, fill with sour cherry preserves, if you have an embarrassment of sour cherry preserves.

fold square corner-to-corner and crimp the edges with a fork. bake at 350 until done. 

do not burn the roof of your mouth.