Every autumn the village had a big dinner in the square, the Long Table, and Selma the baker had to bake three hundred loaves for it. One evening at six o'clock, her big oven cracked with a loud bang. Smoke filled the shop, and the repairman could not come until Monday.
Selma sat down on a flour sack. Her granddaughter Lotte, who was ten, ran outside and rang the school bell. The neighbors came. "Who has an oven?" asked Selma. Everybody had one! She cut the dough into pieces, and everybody took a bucket of it home.
All night the village baked. Children rode their bikes with hot loaves in towels. In the morning the Long Table was full of bread. Selma tasted a piece. "This is not my bread," she said. "No, Grandma," said Lotte. "It's ours."
