Clodia sizes up the short Elf who has just approached us and then starts explaining.

"Raissa, this is Joey. He'll be working with you today. Most of the work for the day has already been done since we’ve already sent out the daily shipments. Now, it's time to prepare everything for tonight's shift. Raissa was also working on a couple of cakes, Joey. Do not bother her too much. If you mess something up, I'll fire you on the spot."

If this was anything but a bakery, I'd be terrified. But this is a home-game for me.

"Don't worry, boss," I smile at Clodia. "I shall not be in her way; I'll just be her shadow."

"Good. I have some VIP custom orders for the Valerii to take care of now. Raissa, Joey is all yours. And don't screw up those cakes, Raissa. It's high-time you get some cake-related skills."

The small Elf girl nods shakily. She's probably not taller than 5'6, an anomaly in this city of tall people. Hell, she must feel threatened just looking out of the door.

"Hi, Raissa," I say with a sweet smile, taking a step back, "What's up?"

"Hi," she says quietly, clearly a bit lost about what Clodia just told her to do.

Let's see – why did Clodia dump me in the hands of the smallest Elf with the shyest character? If I was a bad person, I'd definitely take advantage of her—ohhhh, I see what that big, strong hag is doing.

Smart.

Suddenly, I feel the eyes of every other employee on my back, and a smile spreads on my lips. Huh, this is a test so blatant it couldn't be more out in the open.

But as long as I don't mess anything up, I should be good.

"Hey, do you know where I can get changed into some working clothes?" I say gently.

Raissa nods and stops fidgeting on the spot, leading the way to a changing room. "You can use those pants and tops," she points at a neatly folded stack of clean clothes. "We always change into working clothes here. Just... I'll wait outside to make sure no one enters."

...

Now that I'm of my suit and wearing the same garbs as the other workers, including the pink apron with a cute pink rolling pin stitched on, Raissa brings me to some huge wooden containers with a bunch of flour. There are also a bunch of eggs.

"We need to prepare some noodles before making the bread dough. Do you know how?"

First of all, it's pasta, not noodles. It's pasta all'uovo, woman.

"Sure thing," I nod. They have smaller tables that make up independent stations for baking all around. We start moving some of the ingredients to the two closest tables and, before she can say anything, I start breaking one egg after another into a bowl.

"How much are we making?" I ask.

"Twenty-five pounds each," she says.

Goddamn.

"Sure," I nod, take a good look at the bowl I'm using and fish out a few more from a cupboard close by.

"What are you doing?" Raissa asks curiously as she starts filling up her bowl with flour.

"Making things faster," I wink. "Is the flour already mixed or do we mix it ourselves?"

"Already mixed and ready," Raissa whispers.

I proceed to break all the eggs I think will be needed into three different bowls. If you are making twenty-five pounds of fresh pasta, you gotta use a lot of eggs. I see a wooden fork on the cupboard and pick it up. Usually, you wouldn't want to break the egg outside the flour, but with these quantities, that would just make your work twice as hard. So, I whisk the eggs with the fork as there are no proper whisks in sight.

"You shouldn't—" Raissa looks worried.

"Trust me on this one," I smile.

As she does her business in her bowl, I pour the flour with a clinical eye on the table. When you work with food as long as I did, you don't really need a scale as much as you would think.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

As I make a huge crater inside the mountain of flour, probably a twenty-pound white marvel, I can see people turning to watch me. See, when you don't understand what someone really skilled is doing, you can easily think they are an idiot.

The small table I'm working on is already overflowing with flour when I pour all the eggs right in the center of the flour crater, and the crowd gasps. Come on, people, that's a bit exaggerated. This is how old Italian grandmas do it.

Once I pour in all the eggs, the real work starts. Now, let's make it very clear that if I had not been in the mood for showing that I'm the real deal, I might have done this with a machine. Or magic. Making it by hand like this is very impractical, unless you are extremely proficient.

Now, while my volcano is quite huge, I start mixing the inside of its walls together with the eggs under the widened eyes of most in this bakery. I don't like working slowly and calmly when it comes to baking. Some things require speed. People gotta be fed, and you also need to make time for decorations or other processes that really take a long time and you can't make mistakes.

As I finish mixing the bulk of it, I put down the wooden fork and extend my torso over the table, grabbing the edges of the flour and folding it in toward the ex-crater that has become a yellowy mish-mash of flour and eggs. This is when the pasta is a bit scaly and loses pieces because there are many more 'dry' spots than 'wet’ ones. In general, fresh pasta dough is supposed to be quite dry. Unlike most sweet baking compositions, you don't want the eggs to 'wet' the dough as much as they just need to hold it together.

It's a big difference, folks.

After a couple of minutes, I end up with a huge mound of dough and start rolling it out with strength, folding it several times on itself. By now, Raissa has stopped working on her little bowl and is looking at the huge cannon of fresh pasta I'm handling.

Am I going to make a penis joke from the 'huge cannon'? I mean, yes. But also, not out loud. Also, I'd rather tell Lucinda than defenseless Raissa. So, I'm filing it away for another day.

Now, the dough is finally coming along, and the most important thing is to not break it at this point. You want to stretch it a little, but your dough should never break before you cut it. Otherwise, it will most likely break in those same spots once you cut or cook it.

I sigh after ten minutes of grueling work and look at the massive roll of fresh pasta, leaving it to rest on the table.

"Well, cutting it is a massive pain, right? At least we shortened up the making of the dough."

Raissa nods with an open mouth and points at her table. "Can you show me how to do that?"

I wink and click my tongue as I do, and nod.

...

"And that's about it. You just need to be careful not to punch a hole with your fork through the walls or all the eggs will spill out. And, well, that would be a massive waste of food. We don't want that."

"Thank you," Raissa tells me with a genuine smile. I see some hesitation on her face as she looks around furtively.

"Yes?"

"Would you mind helping me with the cakes? I left the base to rest but I'm not sure about it..."

"Sure thing."

I follow the diminutive Elf to an inscribed cupboard and when she opens it, I raise my eyebrows. It's a fridge. It's a motherflipping enchanted cupboard that is basically a fridge. Huh.

So, Raissa takes out a round cake pan and sets it on a table. I can see what looks like a simple mix for a sponge cake. "Mind if I try it?"

She nods.

I dip my finger in it, checking for clumps but not finding any.

Good.

As I bring it to my mouth, I have to try really hard not to cringe. There's an ungodly amount of sugar in it. And when I say ungodly, I mean that this could slaughter ten diabetic wards and then star in a Latin Soap Opera.

"Hm, sugary," I say, quite literally crunching the sugar crystals with my teeth.

"I never know how much sugar I want to use," Raissa starts panicking and trembling on the spot.

"You know," I smile, "we can do something about it for sure."

I mean, the only thing you can do here is add more eggs and flour. Or...

"Get me an ounce and a half of flour, same of butter, and a cup of milk. Also, do you have lemons here?"

She nods rapidly as I study the mix in front of me and look for a bowl.

By the time Raissa is back, I have moved the mixture into a big wooden bowl, stirring it energetically to warm it up – always a bad idea to work with stuff that is too cold as it won't merge well with the rest of the ingredients.

"This is everything," she says while handing out the ingredients to me.

"Oh, no," I say, "I'm not the one doing it. Come here. Let's switch sides."

"Ok..."

"Pour the milk into the composition," I say. "You need the milk to kind of unmold those elements. Having too much sugar means it will be too glassy and too sweet-y. And this is the base of a cake, not the cake proper; if you add more sugary stuff on top of it, you are doomed. So now, we are going to use the milk to separate everything. Go ahead; put it in and stir."

Raissa follows my instructions and starts separating the cake mix with a big wooden spoon. Now, we have a more liquid dough, closer to the initial state of the ingredients.

"Now, warm up the butter a little before mixing it in. You can use your hands if you want."

I wait and guide her when she doesn't know if it's ready. But, see, if she puts the butter in now, it will clump up everything because we are working with a mixture that is still slightly cold.

"Great, great. Now, you need to peel the lemon skin and grind it as finely as you can. Cut it extremely finely into tiny scales. You don't want people biting into it, but at the same time, you want them to taste the lemon. We are flavoring our cake base here."

When she's done mixing it in, I have her add the rest of the flour. Now, when we taste it again, we can barely taste the sugar. It's a bit runny compared to the first version but having it rest in the cold before cooking will help.

"Without the milk, it would have been almost impossible to redistribute the sugar properly. So if you make a mistake like this again, just follow the same steps."

Raissa is basically on the verge of tears of gratitude when I hear a hand tap on my shoulder.

"Hm?"

"Why is my employee crying, Joey?" Clodia taps a huge wooden spoon on her equally massive hand.