I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 121

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 121. A Deeper Faith (1)
“Are you saying that right now is a criticism of the Church…?”
“As I said before, it’s your role to make that judgment, Rohan. I would appreciate it if you didn’t shift responsibility onto others. For instance, onto someone like your father, Kim Sun-woong.”
Rohan’s movements, which had seemed ready to leap up and drive a spear of light through me at any moment, froze solid.
He must be wondering.
How I knew both his name and his father’s name.
But contrary to my expectations, his deliberation didn’t last long.
He parted his lips with one corner of his mouth curling upward slightly.
“I’ve heard that Yeon-gi takes considerable interest in the human world, but I didn’t expect it to be this thorough. Then again, with my name becoming widely known, stories about my family were bound to spread. How far did your investigation go?”
Of course, the answer he’d arrived at was utterly absurd.
What on earth was he thinking right now?
Did he really believe I’d conducted a background investigation on him?
Simply because he was such a famous person?
“Ha…”
Such remarkably self-centered thinking was almost laughable.
I could understand it if he were a child, but as far as I knew, he’d only just turned thirty.
To harbor such thoughts at that age was pathetic.
Of course, he wasn’t unknown, but now Rohan was operating under the assumption that he was so famous that even an unidentified entity inside a Gate—one who might not even be human—knew of him, and that I’d investigated his family.
Even thinking about it casually, it was a ridiculous notion.
“A well-fed person, upon seeing someone clutching their stomach, assumes they’re doing so because they’ve eaten too much.”
“What…?”
“Would you like to know how I performed the purification?”
Rohan’s movements halted once more.
He was probably curious.
After all, he’d witnessed with his own eyes how I’d handled what the Church and he himself had struggled so desperately to accomplish.
So I would use this as leverage.
“Then please, sit for a moment.”
It had become perfectly clear which bread I needed to bake and what sincerity I needed to infuse into it.
“It won’t take long. Chohong, would you keep watch?”
“Kyuuu!”
With Chohong stationed nearby to restrain the creature should he attempt any disturbance, I stepped into the Kitchen.
* * *
“Do you have a plan, Owner?”
“I’ve figured out which bread to make.”
“The proposal the Witch’s Cottage made this time doesn’t need to be carried out. After all, it was merely the Cottage’s suggestion for your future. The choice is yours alone.”
Noir, who had been watching Rohan warily until the moment I entered the Kitchen, spoke those final words while glancing back toward the reception room.
Well, though I call them final words, the grinding of teeth and growling made it clear his emotions were quite wounded.
“Why do you dislike him so much?”
“Over the years, serving countless Previous Witches, I’ve witnessed everything humans have perpetrated while hiding behind the mask of religion.”
The Witch’s Cottage follows those who carry the blood of witches scattered across the entire world.
Noir, being a Familier who serves as the key to this house, would have witnessed it all.
Every significant event that has unfolded on this earth.
“The bell-stealing games were tolerable enough. But the Crusades… they were nothing short of vulgar, Owner.”
The Crusades, which had been waged multiple times throughout history.
What began as pure religious fervor in the early days became tainted over time as European lords and papal authority conspired together, intertwining worldly desires—territorial expansion, plunder, and conquest.
The Fourth Crusade was so corrupted that it even invaded the Byzantine Empire, a fellow Christian nation.
“And that’s not all. During the Thirty Years’ War, one out of every three people in Germany perished, Owner. One of the Previous Witches even wished for a massacre—all because of religion.”
Tens of thousands slaughtered, blood and flesh scattered everywhere, cruel executions and bodies hung from the cathedral’s highest points while imprisoned in iron cages.
Throughout human history, religious conflicts have rarely been resolved peacefully, so it was only natural that Noir trembled with revulsion.
Moreover, when people invoked the term “witch hunts” to massacre the innocent, even the true Witches who had genuinely helped humanity fell victim to death.
“The creature now sitting inside the Witch’s Cottage is far worse than those times, Owner. I’m restraining myself from tearing out his throat right now. Meow.”
“Then hold on just a little longer.”
“Do you really intend to bake bread for someone like that?”
“I’ve never refused to bake for anyone.”
Just look at Tae-woong.
I’ve never withheld bread from someone simply because they were wicked.
What about the potato bread eaten by those who recently slandered me and desperately tried to ruin my bakery?
“Whether someone is virtuous or wicked doesn’t matter.”
What changes is the bread they need.
What changes is its purpose.
That’s all there is to it.
“Meow… If that is your will, Owner…”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“I haven’t understood—I’ve merely accepted it. Meow. So then, may I ask what bread you intend to bake?”
“It came to me as I was listening.”
Now that I thought about it, the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral was a famous cultural heritage site.
The memory came to me belatedly—I’d seen it on a travel show playing on the television back when my old bakery had nothing but flies buzzing around.
“It’s the cathedral where the relics of Saint James, one of Jesus’s twelve apostles, are enshrined.”
For this reason, the path leading to this cathedral was given the name Santiago Pilgrimage Route.
“But what does that have to do with bread?”
“The symbol of Saint James is the scallop shell.”
The legend behind this is quite fascinating.
As the first martyr among the apostles, his body was beheaded and placed by his disciples in an empty boat, which miraculously drifted safely all the way to the Iberian Peninsula.
And the reason for this was…
“Scallop shells clung so thickly to the corpse and the boat that it remained completely undamaged.”
“Perhaps one of the disciples carried the blood of a Witch? I wouldn’t know, since I wasn’t there…”
“In any case, the scallop shell became the symbol after that.”
“But what’s the point of that?”
“When you hear ‘scallop shell,’ doesn’t a particular bread come to mind?”
A beautiful, delicate pastry shaped like a seashell—more precisely, a baked confection.
A bun with a protruding belly button that serves as both its charm and a measure of proper baking.
“I’m thinking of baking madeleines.”
Madeleine.
A traditional small shell-shaped sponge cake originating from the Lorraine Region of France.
While commonly known as a light accompaniment to black tea or coffee, it’s also a pastry rich in origin stories and symbolic meaning.
“The most prominent theory is that madeleines were baked by a convent in France.”
The theory that it originated from celebrating Mary’s birth on July 22nd, the “Saint’s Day” in the Western tradition.
But there’s another origin story as well.
“There’s also a theory that a girl named Madeleine distributed scallop-shaped pastries to pilgrims.”
Even then, Santiago was a holy site, so there were many pilgrims walking the roads.
They used portable scallop-shaped tableware to honor James, and one girl supposedly gave these pilgrims pastries baked in the scallop shape—a symbol of pilgrimage.
“Honestly, I prefer this version of the story.”
“It might actually suit that religious creature quite well, Owner.”
“It has symbolic meaning, after all. Though what matters most is sincerity. Let’s begin.”
Baking madeleines isn’t as difficult as one might think.
It simply requires a delicate touch.
“First, I need to melt the butter.”
I lit a low flame and slowly melted the butter in a saucepan.
If it got too hot, the eggs I’d add later would cook—a disaster. I checked that it reached a warm temperature by testing it on the back of my hand.
Around fifty degrees, then I’d turn off the heat and transfer it.
“Then I’ll add the prepared ingredients…”
First, I beat the eggs in a bowl, then added sugar and salt.
Usually, this step involves whisking vigorously until your arm nearly falls off, but with madeleines, that’s unnecessary.
In fact, it’s better not to.
“Why is that?”
“If there’s too much air, the texture becomes too light after baking. Plus, the batter puffs up unevenly and the shape won’t turn out pretty.”
“Now that I think about it, the Previous Witches all did the same. Meow.”
After stirring gently until the sugar’s grittiness disappeared, the standard process was to sift in the prepared cake flour and baking powder.
But…
“I’m adding something special.”
“What, golden flour and fairy wing powder?”
“That’s right, but this time I have some particularly special wing powder.”
“Meow?”
I’d been regularly receiving fairy wing powder through Miracle.
Noir’s express delivery service had been quite helpful.
In any case.
“This time, Miracle sent me something—rare fairy wing powder they discovered.”
I spoke while gently shaking the processed powder in its bottle.
A fine powder with a grayish hue, like ash.
Had anyone unfamiliar with it seen this, they might have wondered why I was making such a fuss over stone dust.
“Fairy Dust of Silence.”
Thanks to Miracle’s detailed notes in the letter, I was able to explain it to Noir.
It was fairy wing dust—a substance that grew only on the cliffs Inside the Gate, deep within remote mountains so isolated that no sound could be heard at all.
Hence the name: Silence.
“Originally, it was supposedly used as an ingredient in various alchemical processes, but when I experimented with it, I found it had quite remarkable effects.”
“Quite remarkable effects?”
“It accelerates the resting period of the dough.”
And it does so perfectly—generating coldness true to the rest period’s intended purpose while inducing relaxation of the gluten structure.
This meant I could compress what normally took an hour into mere moments.
“Plus, the results are excellent.”
[Fairy Dust of Silence]
▷ Wing dust obtained from the Fairy of Silence dwelling on cliffs deep within the forest.
The mysteries of fairies who know not the concept of noise are imbued within, accompanied by negative energy.
▷ Effects
① Absolute Silence: The dust absorbs all sound where it exists. Even the noise of the mind that echoes within one’s thoughts.
“To regain one’s senses, you must think things through calmly in a quiet place.”
After sifting the golden flour through a fine mesh, I sprinkled the Fairy Dust of Silence delicately into the bowl.
My ears already began to feel muffled as the effect took hold.
Noir seemed to sense the same strange change, continuously touching at ears that now felt peculiar.
“The sound doesn’t seem to carry well, Owner.”
“I must have added just the right amount. Now then…”
I slowly mixed with a whisk until the dust disappeared from sight, then added the melted butter in several portions.
As the dough began to shine, I added lemon zest to bring a bright, citrusy flavor.
“And if I simply let it rest like this…”
Shhhhh~
The dough gradually cooled.
Once the instantaneous resting process concluded, I retrieved the shell-shaped molds I’d prepared in advance.
I brushed melted butter thinly over them, dusted lightly with flour and tapped away the excess, then filled each mold only eighty percent with dough.
“Now I just need to bake it.”
“It smells delicious, Owner. But remember this—bread can always be baked deliciously, but what truly matters for a Witch’s bread is sincerity.”
“Of course.”
The moment I placed the molds inside, the Oven read my sincerity and began operating.
That meant I’d succeeded in infusing it with genuine intent.
“Just what kind of sincerity did you put in there… Meooowww…”
Noir, curious and asking me about it, was immediately captivated by the aroma the moment I opened the Oven.
The fresh fragrance from the lemon zest mingled with the devastatingly rich, nutty aroma that only golden flour possessed.
The palm-sized madeleine I removed from the mold was chewy, with a beautifully risen, perfect dome.
The golden-brown baked surface shimmered slightly—an effect of the fairy dust—making it appear as though crafted from pure gold.
And…
[Madeleine of Lost Time]
▷ A Madeleine that summons tranquility and awakens lost memories.
Baked by a Witch of exceptional skill using rare ingredients.
▷ Effects:
① Memory Manifestation: At a specific probability, recalls one of the lost memories. The probability fluctuates based on the conversation and information shared at the time of consumption.
“This will do.”
It contained the sincerity I had desired.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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