Baking with Bertha
INFO 312-239-8570 (for theater reservations and lessons)
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This six-foot-six, 57-year-old hausfrau from Franklin, Minnesota (“just like Lake Wobegon, except we have a Wal-Mart and a crystal meth problem”), in her size-13 white pumps, white hose, and light blue polyester floral print dress, is the creation of 30-year-old writer, performer, and pastry chef Michael Bowen. He borrowed the name from Jane Eyre: Bertha Mason is Rochester’s mad first wife. Bowen, who read the book in college, says, “It was a bit of an in-joke with my friends that when you found love you either were a Jane pining for your Mr. Rochester or a Bertha–crazy, locked in the attic setting fires. I was always a Bertha.”
For the modest fee of $50 per person (which can vary with the number of guests and the menu), Bertha will come to your kitchen and give you and your friends a unique baking lesson. Bertha provides the vintage aprons, polka music, board games, and the stories; hosts come up with the baking basics (flour, sugar, etc)–or not, though then the cost is greater. And for four Sundays in July, starting July 1, Bertha will be talking about her recipes, spinning yarns, and serving premade baked goods at Live Bait in her first one-woman show, Baking With Bertha.
For Bowen, Bertha is a tribute to the “strong, overbearing women” who ruled his family in rural Sidney, New York, a town of about 5,000 in the foothills of the Catskills. “No matter how bad their lives get, everything and anything can be fixed with a slice of pie and a fresh coat of lipstick,” he says. His family owned a restaurant, where both his parents cooked. “And all my aunts baked. It’s what farm women do. So baking is just very natural to me. It’s very soothing to have my hands working butter into flour.”
