Listen to Your Bread

by Ann Haut

A tough town like Olean offers a guy only so many job sweat in the stench of oil refinery crude, like his immigrant father does, suffer boredom in a factory job, or apprentice in a trade. Icky Haut chooses the latter and works his way up, one crumb at a time, in a commercial bread bakery. Haut loves everything about baking the smell and taste of yeast, the softness of flour rubbed between fingertips, the intense heat of ovens, the anticipation of a loaf's rise, and the comfort of its promise of sustenance. But after his second child is born, he realizes he's been mixing, proofing, shaping, scoring, and baking dough half his life. Is this it? Maybe not . . . but then his great idea to expand the bakery jams him up with his boss, and he's toast. How Haut relies on family and faith to start his own bakery is the center of this real-life, local-guy-makes-good story set in the 1930s and 40s. Haut's boss calls bread the ""staff of life"" feeding his bottom line; the Hauts are nourished by their faith, and that shift in perspective recasts the story to hope in the ""Bread of Life.""

252 pages, Hardcover

Published May 10, 2021

Reviews

[Bob Bransdon]

Easy Reading

This is a faith-based story set in the period after the First World War, through the Depression and Second World War, and beyond, about the life of Icky Haut and his family. It is a fictionalized account of Icky and his family, as he grew up in the small NY town of Olean. Icky was one of 3 boys, sons of German immigrants.
Icky was married to Mollie, a young lady he had met at the local swimming pool. They had 2 children, Mary Lou and Mark.
Icky started his working life as part time laborer at a local bakery run by Mr Mace Bolles, a staid old curmudgeon who ran his business his way and only his way. Icky progressed from laborer to apprentice baker thru to head baker. Hard work was a requirement in those days and Icky was a very hard worker and dedicated employee of Bolles Bakery. Icky believed that the bakery should expand beyond the bread that was being baked but Mr. Bolles would have nothing of it. it would mean spending more money. How would that effect Icky's employment? Follow Icky's career and the family's trials, tribulations and joys as you read the book.
During his career at the bakery, he was told by the head baker he eventually replaced to “listen to your bread”, a term which he was told related to testing actual loaves of bread when they came out of the oven. As the book progresses you will find that the term has a deeper seated and spiritual meaning.
This is an easy read and an enjoyable story which the author Ann Haut built from stories of Icky and Mollie provided by Mary Lou and Mark Haut.