The smell of scorched rye and caraway seeds filled the kitchen with a heavy, honest domestic warmth that pushed the damp mountain chill back into the scullery corners.
Hobb stood before the great beechwood table, his flour-dusted hands working with the swift, unthinking precision of an artisan who had shaped five hundred loaves a week since his first apprenticeship on the river quays.
“It is an old carter’s trick from the western valley,” Hobb explained, rolling a strip of stiff, dark rye dough between his thick palms until it formed a smooth cord as thick as a man’s thumb. “When the river guilds were fighting the timber barons over bridge tolls thirty years back, the barge boys carried their dispatch orders in their ration tins. A bailiff can search a lad down to his skin, but he never cuts open a stale crust of bread unless he has an appetite for dry rye.”
He brought the ends of the dough strip together, twisting them once through a central loop, and pressed the tail flat against the board with the heel of his thumb.
“Look closely,” Hobb said, tapping the twisted dough with his wooden scraper. “A single overhand twist. Simple. Clean. You can feel the ridge with your thumb in the dark without striking a light. That means flour is waiting at the mill culvert.”
