Ratatouille Moments

To my baking friends,

I hope you are doing well, and finding time in the kitchen. I finally fed my starter and have dough rising on the counter. With Felix only occasionally around, I tend to bake compulsively for a couple of days and stock the freezer. I put the starter in the fridge, thinking that I will focus more on writing if I don’t have the tether of a loaf pulling me into the kitchen.

But something always pulls me. Yesterday, I went on a serious sidetrack and washed the slipcover on the sofa — this involved considering buying a new slipcover, or maybe new cushions for the beloved piece of furniture my sister Pegeen gave me 20 years ago.

This is my reading sofa. My dozing boat. Where Jack and I watch TV. I think it is almost a garment, except it wears me. We travel through life and books together.

But here I am at the desk, offering another reflection on baking from Gretchen Kopmanis of Czechbox Bakery. I love how she captures how her baking lands in people’s lives and memories. Don’t we all want our baked goods to be a bridge? To the past and to each other? To a future full of love and feeling loved?

I hope you have memories and moments, many now’s full of life, to catch and carry you through your days.

Amy

About the author: Gretchen Kuehnlein-Kopmanis is a director of financial support programs at the University of Michigan. To keep her family’s heritage recipes alive, she started a cottage food business in 2012 called Czechbox Bakery, specializing in Eastern European and Baltic baked goods. “Being a European bakery means my ingredient palette is different from an American bakery. Eastern Europeans use poppy seed, not peanut butter; English walnuts, not Southern pecans; apricots, not peaches. Being a heritage bakery means I only use ingredients that were available in the 1850s.”

The best feeling in the world is having your customer say something nice, something personal, about your product. I think of the open house I held in my home when I started my cottage bakery, and a person I’d never met before told me that my poppy seed rolls were just like the ones she had at home in Romania. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “I haven’t had this since my mom passed away” or “this is just like the way my grandma made it!”

There is one story that I tell again and again about a customer who was standing several feet away from my table, frowning. “The smells are better over here!” I laughed, waving him forward. He glowered and came forward, slowly looking everything over. After a moment, he grudgingly said, “I guess I’ll try this” and picked up a slice of poppy seed roll. His tone was sour, like I was twisting his arm or begging him to save my poor little bakery with his purchase. He handed over the cash and gave me one more bitter look as he turned and walked away. I turned to my husband and found the same expression on his face that was on my own: what was that about? But, at the end of the day, it was a purchase and I was confused but grateful.

Ten minutes later, here comes the same sour puss hurrying back. His eyes were as big as eggs and his face alight with amazement. There was so much emotion emanating from him that I almost doubted it was the same man! “You took me back to my grandma’s kitchen! You took me back to her kitchen when I was a little boy!”

He’d had a “Ratatouille” moment.

He explained that he’d searched for that flavor, that memory, for years after her death and always walked away deeply disappointed. After failing so many times, I understood his skepticism from minutes before. He looked so different with that enormous smile on his face. He bought several full rolls. He came back the next month, too. He even placed a special order and picked it up from my home. He follows me like a groupie now, always smiling when he sees me.

I did that. I gave that to him. It’s my favorite story.

And that’s the part I come back to on the hard days; the flour-on-my-clothes, dough-under-my-fingernails, up-until midnight days. It isn’t just the sales numbers or the pretty pictures for social media. It’s that quiet, indescribable moment when something I make with my own two hands manages to bridge time for someone else. When a flavor becomes a thread connecting them to someone they loved, or a place they thought they’d lost, or a version of themselves they haven’t felt in years.

People talk about “comfort food,” but this job has taught me that comfort goes far deeper than a warm pastry on a cold morning. Sometimes it’s grief with sugar on top. Sometimes it’s homesickness wrapped in dough. Sometimes it’s the ache of missing someone you can’t call anymore… but for a few bites, the ache softens.

Over the years I’ve watched faces change right in front of me, wrinkles smoothing as someone suddenly looks twenty years younger in their memories, or eyes filling with tears they try to blink away because they didn’t expect a simple cookie or roll to hit them “right there.” And every time it happens, I feel that same little spark inside me, that same rush of warmth in my chest. It’s humbling and electric all at once.

I think that’s why the story of that man — my “Ratatouille” man — has stayed with me so fiercely. Not because he became a loyal customer, though that’s lovely. Not because he buys rolls by the armful now, though that still makes me laugh. But because he let me see the exact moment a memory came back to life for him. He let me witness his guard drop, his skepticism melt, his childhood return to him in a single bite. How many people get to see that? How many jobs let you give that kind of gift?

Every time he shows up now, waving at me from across a crowded market with that same wide grin, it reminds me why I do this. Why I stress over dough hydration and filling ratios and oven hotspots. Why I chase perfection even when it means remaking a whole batch. Because somewhere out there is another person searching for a taste they thought they’d never find again. And maybe, just maybe, I can give it back to them.

That story will always be my favorite. Not because it’s dramatic or unusual, but because it’s exactly why I started baking in the first place: to make something that matters to someone and reconnect them to their past, their heritage. And every time I tell it, it reminds me that I really do get to be part of these small, beautiful moments in other people’s lives.

And that is the best feeling in the world.