Severin looked at the dough in front of him as if considering something. Only for a moment, until he seemingly came to a decision. Emily was perplexed but intrigued when she witnessed Severin suddenly springing into action. He turned around to face one of the many other countertops; one that was still unused and therefore shiny and spotless. ‘First things first.’

With no related knowledge provided by the System and no past kitchen experience to speak of, Severin didn’t feel especially confident. He still felt he had to give it a try.

‘How hard can this be?’ he asked himself as he removed a bunch of tomatoes from the inventory. Back on earth, he would surely use sieved tomatoes if he ever had the urge to go out of his comfort zone and try something like this. But here, he was forced to use the whole tomatoes provided by the System.

For a moment, he considered taking them as they were and throwing them straight into a pot, but then changed his mind.

He would peel them before removing the last bit of the stem at the top. Only then would he cut the tomatoes into eights and start boiling them down. At least, that was the plan. Thanks to the skills the System infused him with when acquiring the salad recipe, no blood was drawn, but that was pretty much the only positive takeaway.

The result wasn’t nearly as pretty as he had imagined.

The skin just didn’t want to come off. As a result, large parts of the fruit were needlessly thrown away while also making a huge mess and taking a lot more time than Severin had originally estimated. What was left of the tomatoes weren’t slices, but some coarse misshapen chunks. At some point, even Emily couldn’t help but laugh at her boss.

‘This can’t be right. No way that’s how it’s done.’ Severin was frustrated and very much regret the whole idea. He was on the verge of giving up. The only reason he prevailed was that he figured that this had been the hardest part; the halfway point was already crossed.

Once the pot was filled with the red mess, Severin added more than just a good dash of the olive oil that was originally used to make the salad and then turned on the heat.

Then he hesitated a bit. ‘Spring onions, huh? Sure look different from the… regular?… ones. Well. Onions are onions, I guess.’

Some garlic also made it into the pot, followed by a few pinches of salt and a generous amount of pepper. He went purely by feeling.

If he had some available, he would’ve also added a small amount of sugar. Though he wasn’t too sure about the specifics, he thought he knew that it normally belonged in there.

Severin started stirring the pot as the contents under the heat slowly but surely transformed into something that vaguely represented tomato sauce.

Initially, he tried to fish out some of the seeds, but he soon gave up on that.

Just when he was about to sample his creation, he had another idea.

There was still the thyme and oregano.

Though he didn’t visually recognize the two herbs, he was familiar with their names and the smells. ‘Might be the dried stuff mom used to use…’

Suddenly he couldn’t help but feel melancholy and stood there while absentmindedly staring into the pot in front of him.

“Ouch! Fuck!” A bit of hot bubbling sauce splattering onto his forehead soon tore Severin out of his thoughts.

Annoyed, he closed the lid and turned down the heat. He turned his attention back to the dough behind him.

Quicker than expected did he manage to thinly roll out some dough, which was only made with wheat flour. The one containing rye didn’t look right to him for his purpose. He had no clue whether the fact that the dough wasn’t made using the small packets of yeast he knew from home would make any difference, but in the end, it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter.

Somehow, he managed to successfully move the dough onto an oven tray without tearing it.

‘That should be pretty much it, I guess.’

By now Emily was long finished with her meal but had decided to stay and observe what her boss was doing. Seeing now that Severin had some downtime as he decided to let the sauce simmer for some more minutes, she finally asked, “What exactly are you making? This isn’t something from the recipe book, right?”

Severin showed her a strange smile; as if he tried to look mysterious while at the same time lacking the necessary confidence. “It’s a surprise! You’ll see soon enough.”

The girl started to pout but before she could complain Severin continued, “What are you even still doing here? Shouldn’t you be back inside the store by now?” Severin was so absorbed into his work he had already forgotten that he was the one who had called her over in her break. Only now did he realize that the whole thing took more time than expected. Especially him struggling to remove the skin of a few kilograms of tomatoes was something he miscalculated. His lack of experience was evident. Worst of all, he still had to process all of his customers’ orders. With no bread already in the oven, he still had a lot of work to do and most certainly wouldn’t make it in time when the midday break would end in just a few minutes.

“Hmpf. Fine. But you better let me try some. Promise!” Emily demanded.

“Promise,” he willingly assured.

After Emily was sent out of the kitchen and given the task of placating the adventurers waiting for their food, Severin wanted to make haste.

‘I should get the thing into the oven as soon as possible. Then I can focus on the bread.’ With these thoughts in mind, he removed the pot from the stove and with a spoon, spread the red substance over the rolled-out dough; in the end, he totally forgot tasting his creation. After that, he directly summoned a portion of white cheese into his hands and began to evenly distribute slices of it on top of the sauce-covered dough.

Thinking that it was the same kind of dough, he decided to go with the settings he used for baking the bread; the oven had a temperature of around three hundred degrees. As for the duration, he would just have to check every now and then.

After putting the tray into the oven, Severin had only just returned to the work surface and was about to replace the dough he had used before he was interrupted. Apparently, he had underestimated the power of a magically fueled commercial oven.

[Newly crafted product successfully detected.]

That was only the first of a bunch of notifications.