It was a normal, peaceful morning just before dawn. Fëanor moved closer to Nerdanel in sleep. Perhaps he would have remained a sleep, if not for that he felt a odd smell from somewhere.
"...are the city guards lightening torches close to our house this early?"
Well, the window was open to let in some of the colder night air, since it was summer and very warm during the day time.
"Honey, are you burning something?" Nerdanel mumbled in her sleep. He was about to response, when the smell became stronger. Namely, from the downstairs.
"The kitchen?!"
Fëanor threw himself up from the bed in alarm at spotting some black smoke from the window, suddenly recalling that the kitchen area was not far from the window below their bedroom. Nerdanel was awakened by his loud voice, but at seeing the smoke as well she followed after him down the stairs.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
The whole kitchen was filled with black smoke which came from the oven, despite all the open windows. A coughing somewhere, and a small shape was indeed moving close to the where the oven door was half opened.
"Get away from the oven, Rûsa!" Nerdanel cried in worry, Fëanor tossing their grandson to her to catch in her arms before grabbing a bucket of water standing in the kitchen just for this kind of situation and threw the water into the oven ro put the fire out.
"You are RUINING it!" Rûsa protested in dismay as a sizzling sound was heard at the water hitting something, his words ignored as his grandfather kicked open the kitchen door to the garden to let in more air and get the smoke out.
"You are not allowed in the kitchen alone, and especially not with a fire! What if you burns yourself?! Nerdanel scolded in response, earning a sour glare from him. Now Maedhros arrived as well, having noticed that her son was not sleeping in his own bed and naturally had panicked at the smell of smoke.
"Well, this...was unexpected," Fëanor commented after lightening a lamp and a small mess was revealed at the kitchen counter, where they saw opened small bags of flour, sugar and dropped eggs on the floor. And the reason for the smoke was revealed as a batch of small bread, completely burnt black.
"I wanted to help making breakfast buns and surprise you…" Rûsa admitted, making a worried face as his grandfather pulled on a oven mitt to pick up one bun, looked at it with a suspicious look and naturally found it impossible to eat when he tried to bite into it.
"The thought was nice but this is basically coal," was all Fëanor said, dropping the bun on the table where a rather heavy sound was heard at the landing.
Rûsa was too upset over the baking failure to protest as he normally would have done.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Later the same day, when Caranthir had been tasked with some babysitting for a few hours:
"Baking bread? Yes, there is very simple kinds of bread which can be baked at once, but others need some more work on. I take it that you never was involved in the food chain in the past?" Caranthir said when his younger nephew told of why there still was a faint smell of smoke in the kitchen.
"No…."
Seeing how Rûsa really seemed depressed over what had happened that morning, Caranthir hoped to cheer him up by showing how to make a bread.
"On the second shelf above the floor in the food storage, there is a closed glass jar I want you to get. The lock is a red one."
Caranthir knew that jae well enough. It was not the original jars from his childhood so long ago, but Nerdanel had kept the marking as a sign of which content inside so it would not be mistaken for something else. He had picked out the rest of the dry ingredients when Rûsa came back with the jar.
"What is it inside? It does not look very tasty," the Elfling said at a closer look.
"It is fermented dough from a earlier baking, you spare one piece each time and that is a secret part to a successful bread. It is the yeast inside that will help the bread raise. Wild yeast, as it is called, is made from mixing water and flour and letting it stand for some time."
Showing Rûsa how it was done, Caranthir mixed the earlier dough into flour, salt and water. Once it had formed into a smooth, slightly sticky dough on the floured surface where he had kneaded it with his hands, he put it under a towel over a bowl to rise in the room temperature until it had doubled in size.
"It needs to raise like that again after that we have formed it into a loaf, or it will end up as a very flat bread."
They used the time to light a fire in the oven for baking the bread later. Tasking Rûsa with making a baking tray greased with butter, Caranthir formed the dough into a bread loaf which he then placed on the tray.
"Shall it be covered again now? You said twice, after all."
"Exactly."
Once the bread loaf had raised somewhat more, Caranthir placed the tray into the oven so it could be baked. Waiting was not the most fun part, but it was important to keep eye on the bread so it was not burned.
"So I was too fast in placing the buns into the oven?" Rûsa asked while his uncle placed a piece of the dough to become a new fermented dough for another baking eventually.
"Possibly too high heat as well. Small buns and smaller breads are sensitive for heat because of their size. It is a common beginner mistake. Curufin is not someone you want to leave the bread-baking to, he treats the oven like a forge at times, as high heat as possible and Maglor was the sibling most likely to end up with burnt food because his mind could suddenly become caught up in new lyrics for songs."
That habit had been forced out of both the brothers when they were in Middle-Earth and they needed to focus on what they was doing with their hands. The alternative had been to go to sleep without food, something which could trigger up bad memories for Maedhros who had not gotten much food while she was chained to the mountain cliff. Rûsa was used to starving in his first life, but he hated the feeling of how little body energy he had as a result from it.
"Look at that, this might be a bread you can try to make yourself when you are a little older. The fire can still burn you too easy currently," Caranthir smiled at taking the bread out from the oven and it was perfect in golden-brown colour and size.
There was no mistake in how happy Rûsa was at the thought, now when he had learned what mistakes he had been doing that morning. Now he and Caranthir could surprise his mother and grandparents with this bread for the dinner.
