Boy, What a Fabulous Baker

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/style/modern-love-boy-what-a-fabulous-baker.html

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The two loaves of bread caught my eye. Then I noticed the man in the goofy hat holding them. In his profile picture, he looked like a carpenter or shipbuilder, someone who should always wear flannel, a man with broad shoulders and a beard perfect for catching crumbs.

I swiped right. We matched.

Scanning his Instagram, I realized he made food for a living. His feed featured croissants the size of a human head, zucchini lasagna, coconut doughnuts, cauliflower pizza and bacon-and-egg pasta.

As it turned out, his bakery was within walking distance from my apartment, so I decided to go check it (and him) out. Meeting the baker in person on my own secretive terms seemed safer than showing up for a potentially horrible blind date. And if there was no spark, at least I’d go home with something yummy for lunch.

So one hot Sunday morning, I went deep into Brooklyn, passing factories and rickety buildings with garages big enough to hold bulldozers. I kept looking at my map wondering if I was on the right street. Then I saw the sign.

I had expected your typical hipster bakery, with exposed-filament light bulbs and a $5 cold brew, but his bakery seemed more like a scientist’s lab. The space was enormous, with high ceilings, and the air was chalky with flour dust.

The baker was in the back wearing an apron covered in flour. We caught eyes immediately. He put down the bread he was tossing and asked if I needed help. I was pretty sure he didn’t recognize me from my online photos.

I have found that the longer you date, the more people start to remind you of people you’ve already dated. This baker, however, was unlike any man I’d ever met. His forearms were sinewy, with muscles threaded together like the twisted challah bread in his photos.

After I asked him what they had, he began to talk about the bread. I grew up in a blue-collar Ohio town where bread comes in two flavors: white and brown. I couldn’t keep up with all the details he provided about grains.

I’m not shy, but being around him made me feel as if I were underwater. I kept my eyes focused on the loaves in front of me and finally asked which bread he preferred.

“Ohhh,” he said, hesitating. “That’s like picking a favorite child.”

He picked up a sharp knife and, like Zorro, sliced off a generous piece, handing it to me. My crush was born.

I began following his bakery on Instagram to see what it had that day. The experience mimicked everything I loved about living in Europe — going to the bakery for bread and pastries that had been baked hours or minutes before and talking to the people who made them. Once, I decided to eat one of the baker’s baguettes straight from the bag, the way everyone does in France. The first bite was so tasty I actually muttered an expletive.

My friends soon knew all about my crush on the baker and his bread.

“How’s it going with baker boy?” they’d ask. “I love this guy for you!”

I kept hoping the baker would ask me out, but he wasn’t doing so. Finally, it occurred to me that if I really wanted to go out with him, I should just ask him. But how? I had lived most of my life waiting for men to make the first move. Now in my mid-30s, I’d yet to ask a man on a date (in person and sober, at least).

Everyone seemed to have an opinion on whether girls should ask out boys. Men thought it was an excellent idea and urged me on, guaranteeing the baker would say yes. They even walked me through strategies and role-played. Some women thought so, too, but others tried to dissuade me with advice like, “I wouldn’t — he probably has no trouble getting a date.”

Until then, I had never thought about the courage it must take for men to ask out women. Technology and apps have made rejection less personal but also, at times, crueler, banishing people into the ether without explanation or apology.

But my fabulous baker boy was no longer just a JPEG. He was a cute, woodsy guy who made really good ciabatta. If I asked him out and he turned me down, I would be too embarrassed to see him again. Which presented a bigger problem: Where would I get my bread?

I had plenty of chances to ask him that summer but succumbed to my insecurity every time. One day, a friend made me go back into the bakery minutes after I had left to get her a loaf of bread and chat him up.

“Do you know how psycho that’s going to look?” I asked. “I was just in there.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Go.”

By the time I returned, the baker and his team were eating lunch.

“I’m back,” I announced to the room.

They all looked at me as if I were crazy, but the baker got up from his seat and said, “It’s a good thing.”

I walked out with two loaves of bread, a bagel and a cookie, but no date.

The more I thought about how he might react, the more nervous I became. It was like kneading bread: If you work it too much, you mess it up. The trick is in knowing when to stop.

That moment arrived at the end of the summer, when I decided to move to a different neighborhood. Knowing I wouldn’t make the trek back to the bakery every weekend, I decided it was time.

I walked in on a rainy Sunday morning, bad for business but perfect for asking out unsuspecting men when you don’t want an audience.

Wearing red-and-white striped socks, the baker greeted me with a smile and said they had a couple of specials — a kale vegetable stew and butternut squash doughnuts. “Have both,” he said. “We’ll bring them to you as courses.”

A few moments later, the baker emerged with a generous portion of warm soup served in elegant china with a slice of his signature bread. My heart leapt a little when I saw that he had grated cheese on top.

He checked in on me halfway through to ask if everything was O.K. I was feeling tender that morning from too many drinks the night before, and I mentioned that his soup had helped my headache go away.

“You’re hung over?” he asked.

He rushed off and returned with a grapefruit-flavored fizzy beer, saying it would make me feel better. (It did.)

A half-hour later, there wasn’t a crumb or a drop left in my bowl. I was stuffed, but then the doughnut appeared, so I told my stomach to make room. The doughnut was so big I needed a knife and fork to tackle it.

I could have second-guessed myself all day, but I eventually got up and approached the baker, who was alone at the counter. I knew if I didn’t ask him out, the answer would always be no.

Just as I was about to speak, he turned on the blender. Silenced by its roar, all I could do was laugh. When he took my plate, I thanked him for a great meal. Then I took a deep breath and said, “Do you want to hang out sometime?”

Relief set in as soon as I heard the sound of my own words, so much so that I wished I had just done it sooner.

He stared at me, flustered and confused.

“We could talk about bread or something,” I added.

At that, his face softened. “I’d be up for that,” he said. “Do you have a card?”

I pulled one from my wallet and slid it across the counter.

“I’ll text you,” he said.

As I left, my adrenaline high was unlike anything I had ever felt, not only because he had said yes but also because I had asked for something I really wanted. Later that day, however, I found myself back in familiar territory: watching my phone, waiting for a text. Friends said he had several days.

It never occurred to me that he might not text at all. I had this romantic idea that if I were able to summon the courage to ask him out, he’d text me back and we’d go out. Because that’s how the grand gesture works, isn’t it? You take a leap and get rewarded for it?

What I had somehow missed in my middle-school nervousness is that the grandness of my gesture was known to me alone. He had no idea. All he knew was some girl had asked if he wanted to hang out and talk about bread.

One day passed, then two. After a week, I checked the bakery’s Instagram account to see if he was still alive. He was. All I had been getting was really good customer service. That, and a lesson in love.