Summer at Mustang Ridge Read Online Free PDF Page B

sleep with his starter right there in his bedroll, making sure it didn’t get too cold.”
    “He slept with his dough,” Shelby repeated, resisting the urge to look for the hidden cameras.
    “Not dough.
Starter
.” Gran scooped up the air and breathed it in. “It’s a living yeast culture. Every time I use part of Herman to bake with, I feed back the same amount of flour, water, and a few special ingredients to keep the culture alive.” She bustled into the pantry, returning a moment later with a fat biscuit in one palm and a manic gleam in her eyes. She held it out. “Here. Taste this.”
    Shelby took the biscuit, which was admittedly a good-looking specimen, generously rounded on the bottom, rising through dozens of flaky layers to a slightly lopsided top. It was browned top and bottom, and the buttery smell made her mouth water. So she took a bite.
    As she chewed, Gran enthused, “Herman has been alive for more than two hundred years, ever since Jonah Skye won his first five hundred head in a poker game, cashed in his gold to buy Mustang Ridge, and settled here with his wife, Mary. She started Herman with some yeast, flour, water, and a few potatoes, and he’s been an important part of our kitchens ever since.”
    Shelby wasn’t sure she wanted to know that any part of her breakfast predated the Civil War. As biscuits went, though, it was good—fluffy, flaky, melt-in-her-mouth good. Amazingly, delectably good. So good that she was on the verge of a jingle, or at least a good tag line.
Starter Wars: a rebel alliance against little yellow packets!
    Okay, maybe not. And maybe the slogans were a knee-jerk response whenever she was out of her comfort zone. But how could she take this seriously?
    “Well?” Gran demanded, eyes alight with biscuit fever.
    “Best I’ve ever had.” The cook might be whacked, but the biscuit was awesome.
    “I
told
you! And that’s a day-old Herman. Wait until you taste him fresh out of the oven!” She slipped a worn index card from the breast pocket of her apron and set it on the counter. “A triple batch should give us enough for lunch sandwiches and dinner rolls.”
    Okay, Shelby thought. This was something tangible she could work with. Snagging the card, she scanned the recipe, which was written in faded blue ink, with notes added in different colors and handwritings. She tried to imagine her newer-is-better sister keeping a family recipe like this, and failed. Her mother might have kept it, but she would’ve transferred the information to her computer, laminated a printout, and filed it in a color-coded plastic box.
    “Here.” A blue-and-white plate appeared at Shelby’s elbow, holding a perfectly symmetrical muffin that still had a little curl of steam coming from its top. “Try this one.”
    Shelby still had most of a biscuit left, but she set it on the edge of the plate and picked up the fat, perky apple-cinnamon muffin. After drinking in the scent, which would’ve been worth a fortune if they could’ve bottled it, she took a bite, savoring the sweet, buttery dough and plump raisins and doing her best to ignore her inner carb counter’s gleeful
ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!
“Mmm. This is amazing. You’re a genius.”
    Gran’s nod was smug. “Not me. Herman.”
    “This is sourdough? Get out.”
    “There’s a dash of Herman in just about everything we make here. All the way from the salads and coleslaw to the batter for the chicken-fried steaks.”
    That struck Shelby as vaguely unsettling, but who was she to judge? It worked for them, and she was beginning to believe Krista’s claim that Mustang Ridge served some of the best ranch fare in the territory. If this was the kind of quality the kitchen put out across the board, it would outperform many of her favorites back in Boston. Ranch-style, granted, but still.
    She lifted her muffin. “Three cheers for Herman.”
    “Yes, indeed! Anyway, welcome to the kitchen. Fruits and veggies are in the walk-in,