OBLATEN !!!

As if the day needed anymore magic (yesterday being one of those days that unfurled organically - a relaxed breakfast of orange yolked eggs, soft boiled in individual serving dishes, stuffed peppers, olives, volkornbrot with thick butter, aged cheese from Voralberg, dried whole pears; then onto the Naschmarkt for dinner shopping, then the flea market, the Caran d'ache store - new shipment arriving Friday; more lounging in the Naschmarkt with special amber color drinks and crisp sun) while heading home, my friend said, oh wait, I need to stop here.

Suddenly wafts of warm baking filled the air.

I looked up and remembered the other Viennese addiction gone forgotten: oblaten.

This same friend and former colleague had turned me on to these in 1993.

No fear that anything has changed here - an operation undisturbed and in the same location since 1912.

A story that will warm the hearts of my luddite pals, the jolly fellow running the operation and gleefully sharing its history, told of a machine they purchased in the mid nineties to the tune of a quarter million dollars with the aim to automate.

We threw it away. It was no good. We went back to these machines, pointing to the steaming irons.

Sitting almost proudly on the floor of the tiny shop were two "older" presses, but they hardly looked any different from those currently in use. He wants to export to the US, but has no contacts. Zingermans should jump and fast...

What also struck me watching him press pinched dough balls into wafers of delicacy (some are cheese flavored, the best ones in fact, and some sweet) is the whole idea of "plans."

We most often think of them as a horizontal cut or a view down, but here were also plans, literally mashed flat into paper thin slices.

I've often wondered whether how one comes to this view - through cutting, smashing, erosion should impact either the way we draw them (plan views) or think about them.