Grandma's Rolling Pin

 Grandma Mullen
Photo taken in 1969
by my cousin, Tom Sheley
with his then-new Minolta SRT-101

When I was a youngster in Iowa, back in the late 1950s and early '60s, my mother baked bread, biscuits, and cinnamon rolls every Monday. Mothers did things like that in those days and so did their mothers before them.

My mother's kitchen on a Monday was awash in a fog of flour and the flavorful aroma that bread dough takes on in the hot oven as it evolves into something that would soon be as glorious to the taste buds as it was to the sense of smell.

This, of course, was in a day when the best things were made from scratch, nothing was instant from the package, there were no microwave ovens, and "kneading dough" did not pertain to financial requirements.

In Mom's kitchen, loaves of fresh bread plopped out of the pan larger and tastier than any package of store bought Wonder Bread. Biscuits and rolls rose like flaky, golden-crusted monoliths swelling above and over the sides of the baking tins.

You didn't spread soft margarine on Mom's fresh biscuits. You slapped on a hard pad of creamery butter and watched it melt into the biscuit served hot from the oven. Back then, cholesterol was pretty much unheard of and by God we were better off for it.

I used to help with what I could on baking day. Mostly, I just liked hanging around the kitchen, taking in the delicious smells and watching the genius of a mother's uncanny artistry unfold.

What still amuses me when I recall those days is my mother repeating the same words, week after week: "I wish I could bake like Mama did."

Then she'd go on to tell me how her mother baked EVERY day and never used a recipe or a measuring cup. According to Mom, if you asked Grandma Mullen how she did it, she would reply, "I just put in a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

My mother invoked Grandma's memory, too, whenever she baked a pie. While rolling out an absolutely perfect and tasty pie crust, Mom would mutter, "I wish I could make a pie crust like Mama did."

Although Grandma lived until she was nearly 90 years old, I never had the pleasure of eating one of her home-cooked meals, nor did I ever get a taste of her breads and rolls. At least not that I remember. I'm sure that's something I'd never forget.

After Grandpa died, a couple of years before I was born, Grandma went to live with one of my mother's sisters and I don't think for all of those years afterward that she thought of that kitchen as her kitchen. I'm sure she cooked the evening meals for her and my Aunt Madonna, but it couldn't have been the same as preparing pots of savory Irish stew and loaves of bread for her large farm family or frying up a henhouse full of chickens for the relatives who often stopped by the farm for dinner on Sunday.

The Mullen Clan
My mom is Top Row, 2nd from right

When Grandma passed on to that great Irish kitchen in the sky, she left few belongings. She had been a simple woman all her life who loved God and family, the Catholic Church, and Notre Dame. The fanciest things about Grandma were the memories we had of her, and those remain priceless.

All my mother wanted was a glass rolling pin that she remembered Grandma using to roll out those perfectly flaky pie crusts when Mom was young. Somehow my cousin, Frank, had ended up with the rolling pin and when he heard Mom mention it, he graciously gave it to her.

Grandma's rolling pin looked like an ordinary rolling pin except it was made from thick glass, was hollow and had a threaded screw-on cap on one end. Mom tucked it away with her memories and when she died, that was the only thing I wanted.

I discovered from a little research that a glass rolling pin is to be filled with ice chips. The cold glass keeps the pie crust dough from sticking to the pin and this way you can roll out a flat crust. That's why Grandma's pie crusts were so wonderful.

Now the glass rolling pin is tucked away in a drawer in my kitchen. Unlike my mother, I will use it one day. I will roll out a perfect pie crust for my family.

Then I will say, "I can bake like Grandma did." And  in that moment, I hope we'll be better off for it.


Copyright 2006 Wendel Potter