Chapter 324: Teresa’s Request
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou and Onionpi
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The day after meeting with fellow Adventurers from the [Phoenix] party, I found myself relaxing at home.
[6] It’s nice having servants around.
Speaking of servants, Teresa approached me the other day for an oven for baking bread. [9] Personally, I had only ever used the Magic Stove’s oven or the little toaster ovens back in my tiny Japanese apartment. However, it turned out what Teresa wanted was an actual stone oven.
[9] One of those outdoor things that one usually sees in foreign travel catalogues. Personally, as an avid fan of food and cooking, I’m pretty excited by the prospect of getting an outdoor oven too.
Therefore, I had no objections to Teresa’s request.
[9] We decided to build the oven near the servant’s quarters. Since Teresa was confident that she could make very good bread with a ‘proper oven’.
At any rate, I’m interested to try Teresa’s bread so I’m totally fine with the idea of building a stone oven. [9] Who knows, we could even bake pizza!
[6] Thus, the stone oven project was approved.
According to Teresa, she used to bake bread using the stone oven Alban had inherited from his ancestors. I tried asking Alban for details about the oven but he did not seem to know the specifics of making one.
Hmm…
Well, I could ask a stonemason or a craftsman from the city to make one but I want to try making it with my Earth Magic.
[9] I can just flatten the whole thing into rubble if it doesn’t work.
After collecting as many details from Alban and Teresa as I could, I started by making the square bit at the bottom where the firewood goes. [9] I’m fairly used to making square stone structures by now.
However, the dome shape bit where the oven was supposed to be turned out to be a bit more tricky.
[9] I raised the stone from the ground and tried bending it into the shape I wanted. Bits of it broke off in pieces, sometimes the structure collapsed altogether and I had to turn everything back to gravel and try again.
And again.
And again.
“Hmm, I wonder why…” [3] I was running out of magic by then.
Also, it was almost time for lunch. If I don’t feed my familiars, I’d never hear the end of it. I’ll continue with my work after lunch. [6] It’s not going to take long anyway since I’ve made a lot of pre-made food. [5]
“Oi, lunch time~!”
My familiars rushed over at the magic word ‘lunch’.
We had our lunch in the living room of the main building.
On the menu today was Gyudon with soft-boiled egg over rice. Naturally, I gave my familiars plenty of meat and eggs. Everyone ate happily, devouring several ‘seconds’ as usual.
Dora-chan did his best but while Sui and Fer are still eating, he went belly up and was snoring through an open mouth. A dragon that sleeps on his back is just too surreal, [9] his round tummy looking a lot like a dome…
[9] Hmm? Dome?
[9] My eyes travelled towards Sui as the seed of an idea begin to sprout. When it comes to roundness, no one could beat Sui, so…
[9] Should I… get Sui to help me?
“Sui, would you like to help me make something?”
““Hm~? Of course, Aruji~~””
After lunch, we returned to the site where I had been trying, and failing, to make the stone oven. Fer and Dora-chan also tagged along for some reason.
I guess they were just bored.
My biggest issue now is making the dome.
“What is it you’re making?”
““Yeah, you’ve been making and breaking, making and breaking something here. Is it a new game?””
“It’s not a game, I’m trying to make a stone oven. We can use it to bake bread and other things,” [9] like pizza.
“Oh? So it’s for making delicious things?”
“If I succeed, yes.”
While answering Fer and Dora-chan’s questions, I quickly made the base. That part posed no problem but… the actual oven part kept eluding me. However, this time I have an idea how to counter this issue.
[9] First, I make a solid square over the base. I could make the outside dome shape-ish but hollowing out the inside was the biggest problem. I would miscalculate and cause bits of it to be thinner or thicker in places until the whole structure would collapse in the end.
[9] As it is, I managed to make a little hole in the dome and called Sui.
“Sui, could you go inside that dome and make a hole but be sure not to make the walls too thin, okay? Oh and make sure the bottom is flat.”
““Sui will try~~””
Sui bounced into the hole and began to grow slowly. Acid appeared on her body, melting the surface of the stone as she ‘ate’ parts of it.
““Aruji~~ is this good~?”” [3] Sui shrank back to her usual size and bounced around eagerly.
Let’s see, I looked inside the oven and wow, the surface is super smooth.
“Yes, it’s perfect!”
““Ehehe~””
Sui trembled happily as I stroked her.
“Sui is so clever, could you help me again? See the outside? It’s got bits that aren’t smooth. Could you make the outside smooth too? In this shape?” I drew a half-sphere on the floor to demonstrate what I wanted.
““Sui, understands~!””
With that, she bounced towards the oven and draped her body over the outside. All the angles and irregular bits were eaten off and smoothed out nicely.
““Is this good~?”” [5]
“Woah! Sui is incredible! Sui is just too amazing!”
““Ufufu. Is Sui amazing~?””
“Yes, Sui is incredibly amazing~!”
“Oi, it’s done, right? Make something good now.”
No, no, Fer-san. I have to make sure this stone oven passed the quality check first. The best person to ask would be Teresa, the only one of us who has experience using one of these contraptions.
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“Teresa,”
I’m in the basement of the main building. [5] Teresa was down here with the others, transferring soaps and shampoos.
Since the building has a basement, we might as well use it to store all the soap and shampoos. [6] I mean, I technically have 13 empty rooms but it feels kind of weird to do industrial work in one of those luxurious rooms…
“How may I help you, Mukouda-san?”
[8] “Well, the stone oven is done, could you take a look at it?”
“Eh? It’s… done?”
[9] Clearly, she was shocked by the speed of our work. Fufufu, magic sure is convenient. Of course, it would probably take me much longer without Sui’s help.
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“Well, what do you think?”
When there was no answer, I turned to look at Teresa, who was staring at the stone oven with her mouth wide open.
“Erm, is it… not good?”
“No! No, no, no, not at all. I’m just really surprised at the quality of this oven build in such short a time. I-is it really alright for me to use such a fine thing?”
“Of course, I made it at Teresa’s request. But, I’d like to use it now and then.”
“The oven belongs to Mukouda-san, so of course, you should use it whenever you want to. I can use it when you don’t need it.”
“Hahaha, then, I’d like to ask you to bake some bread right away. I’d like to taste some of your freshly baked bread.”
“Erm, it’s not possible to make it right away…”
“It’s not?” I was surprised.
[9] “Before making the bread, we must make the bread base. It’s made by soaking dried fruits in water for a few days. Once bubbles start to appear, that’s when you mix the base with flour to make bread.” [5]
“… I see,” sounds like natural yeast. Should I just give her some instant yeast? No, it would defeat the purpose of eating locally made fresh loaves. Well, I guess I could wait.
“When you’ve made your bread, let me taste some.”
“Naturally, in fact, I insist. My bread is excellent.”
“Mommy’s bread is yummy~~” said Lotte-chan.
Still, it’s a shame to waste the stone oven now that it’s made though…
Right, I’ve decided.
“I’ll make tonight’s dinner with this oven. Teresa, could you get it fired up, please?”
The men had been collecting dry branches from the garden, so we have plenty of firewood. As for myself, I’m really looking forward to using a stone oven.
This is so exciting!
[Gumihou: Lol, this is excitement Gumi could get behind.]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken
[9] Expand on the why and wherefore of the outdoor oven.
Personally, with the proper tools, I could probably build one faster with bricks…
Also, a website on how to make a cheap outdoor oven
http://thecobovenproject.blogspot.com/
https://www.traditionaloven.com/
Gumi wants to build her own stone oven one day, so…
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I guess Teresa doesn’t need to worry about fuel costs or waste heat.
Even in modern times, such as in northern Africa, fuel and facilities for the baking of bread is a problem. Even a few years ago, I watched a documentary about break making where various muslim families would make the dough and leaven it according to their own preference using mother dough. The prepared bread dough would then be run over by foot or bicycle to a baker who had both the oven and fuel for baking bread for the entire community. People would always be bringing over their dough to bake and then leaving with their finished breads. For individual families to heat up an oven and keep the fire going long enough for baking bread was an expensive way to use resources.
Ah yes, this is the normal practice in Europe back in the 1600s up to 1900s too. Make the bread dough at home and then bring it over to the communal bakery to be baked. Also, the dwelling places then were smaller too. Maybe enough for a small stove but not an actual fireplace with a chimney (fire hazard)
There’s a good example of this in Arte. It made sense to either bring your bread to the communal bakery or for a few families to get one fire going and bake their bread together.
I bet the next chapter will be about pizza then.
Thanks for the treat.
Finally… I think this is the first time I’ve seen the whole bread making thing show that the inhabitants of the world do know about various forms of yeast and it’s not always the Japanese MC that somehow shows them such a basic technique.
I haven’t yet seen a story where people get yeast from the beer and wine makers or their own brewing (which was how bread yeast originally came about.)
With the way information may or may not travel in fantasy, I’d really like to see an MC see the various ways (barm from brewing, tangzhong, wild yeast sourdoughs) are being used from country to country.
I would argue that a higher technological society, especially one that has removed itself from home cooking could forget the basic technique and need it re-introduced but the fantasy worlds MCs go to often aren’t those types of places. (Look at the US in the 50-70’s with instant yeast and pre-sliced sandwich bread before the bread renaissance came about.) Come to think of it, there is a particular space mercenary isekai that kind of goes about this with other foods, where people are used to food pastes and replicators and don’t cook that could probably get away with that.
Ooh, now that you mention it, yeah.
Even in Honzuki Gekokujyou, the MC was the one who introduced the yeast made from water and berries thing. Though, it is technically possible to make bread by letting natural bacteria give it that extra rise.
Also, considering all about the fuss of eating unleavened bread during the Passover celebrating the exodus of Jewish people leaving Egypt back in 1200 BCE, ‘leavened’ or yeasted bread had to have existed beyond 3200 years ago.
Whenever in doubt, ask a slime for help, nice isekai logic. Sui is the most useful of the pets, and the cutest.
Thanks for the third chapter this week! Awesome translation! May God bless you!
Sui is on the road to become legendary slime…
Here comes the pizza
Yummy~