Family of Friends

 

For me, as for most people, holidays are about time with family.  And for me, time with family has always been time for food.  This is not something I was always necessarily aware of.  In fact, it wasn’t until recently that I realized I couldn’t think of a single holiday without thinking of multiple associated treats.  Growing up and having delicious dishes designated to each holiday was something I took entirely for granted, much in the same way that most of us take family for granted; it’s a given, it’s expected, it’s what we know will always be there.  There is a certain amount of comfort to be found in things that can be taken for granted.

 

It is in this way that change sometimes feels uneasy.  In my adult life, as I’ve become obsessed with food, I’ve been anxious to introduce new dishes and appetizers to family holidays.  Even when the food is exceptionally good it’s often met with a fair amount of skepticism.  Sure, I’ve successfully sneaked in some biscuits at Thanksgiving and a cheesecake or cookie during Christmas, but with the exception of my penne vodka which simply sassed up the previously existing penne with homemade tomato sauce, I haven’t gotten much to stick.  It seems that good traditions are meant to be continued not reinvented.  It also seems that that my family is relatively resistant to change at their table (little do they know they’re getting deviled eggs with crab for Easter this year).

 

Change, as it relates to food, is something that we can control; my family can roll their eyes when I try to talk them into mulled wine at the holidays and Mexican corn at BBQs but with family, and what constitutes it, the changes aren’t always up for debate.  Sometimes they just happen.  This year our table at Easter brunch will be down one and not because of a rejected recipe.  Our hearts will be heavy but we will be grateful, that for a long time at least, our family changes were mostly happy additions and at our own will.  There were new babies and recently inducted in-laws, found again family and always there were friends.  It is after all, a great cliché that friends are the family we choose for ourselves. 

 

Easter has always been a flexible holiday for us.  We’re not terribly religious so there’s not necessarily pressure to be there.  My family has an Easter brunch with or without me.  In college, when Easter was too close to spring break and I didn’t want to travel again I would simply go home with a friend.  Last year, when Easter fell during my week off I decided to spend it in London with a family of friends.  To this family I brought my family’s Easter staple, the bread.  I’m willing to say that of all the holidays and of all the many foods and sacred recipes in my family, Easter bread is the single most coveted.

 

No one seems to know where the recipe originated yet everyone on my grandmother’s side of the family has the same one and has made it each year for as long as any of them can remember.  This year I just found a photo of my grandmother, uncle, and mother, likely from before I existed, with the bread prominently displayed on the table.  The bread, in this thirty year old photo, looks exactly as it does these days.  It’s remarkably golden on the outside yet has an inner consistency of dense cake.  It’s heavenly rich, perhaps something to do with the dozen egg yolks, and also a bit sweet (2 cups of sugar, I’m looking at you), and it takes really well to being eaten with salty things.  My favorite thing to do with it is to slather it with warm salted butter, add a piece of fresh mozzarella and top with a thin slice of prosciutto.  I’m melting just thinking about it.   You can toast it and pile on the egg salad.  It also likes leftover ham, fried, and paired with sunny side up eggs.  I think my fascination with this bread comes more from its reliable presence in my life more than anything else but it tastes like no other bread. 

 

What’s more is that Easter Bread is Easter Bread.  It’s considered blasphemy to make it at any other time of the year.  I have one vague memory of my mother attempting it one summer but I think she was just practicing.  She failed, anyway.  Easter bread is for Easter.  That’s how it is; that’s the rule.  Don’t try it any other time; we could disown you.

 

The other thing about Easter bread is that despite using the same recipe it comes out differently for everyone.  My grandmother’s is the Golden Standard.  Each year she carefully rations my sister who is known to devour multiple loaves in one sitting.  We all used to get frozen loaves to take home (to be eaten only around Easter) and they always took priority over my mother’s fresh loaves.  I remember, as a child, my mother and her friend laboriously and repeatedly trying but rarely succeeding in producing that special loaf.  They’d go shopping for the long hours it took the bread to rise and this always led to disaster.  I also remember long phone conversations between my mother and her cousin, during which they agonized over every detail of their respective efforts, trying to figure out where they went wrong.  Because of this history with the bread and because Easter in London was Easter with my foodie friends, Easter with my bread baking expert friend, the only thing I insisted upon at Easter brunch was Easter bread.   

 

I packed a tub of Crisco into my suitcase and boarded the redeye.  I arrived on Saturday morning and was soon whisked away to a Tapas dinner.  We had a strict eating schedule and limited time so there wasn’t room for a wasted night of Easter prep.  Don’t misunderstand me- there were weeks of menu planning through emails, of debating exactly how many dips were too many, of ham filled dreams, and of bread baker extraordinaire, Jane, getting peered at through confused faces when she asked various food counters for dry mozzarella (I had requested wet).  Yet somehow, there was little time for the actual food prep and so when we arrived home, flushed with Sangria cheeks, we began our bread making around 1 am. 

 

Hating recipes, as I do, I hadn’t looked all the way through the bread recipe beforehand.  It turned out that there were a few things I had overlooked.  You know, like how a flour well was involved.  Like how we would be melting butter without a microwave.  Like how the eggs were supposed to be room temperature.  Worst of all, I had wrongly assumed that someone who makes as much bread as Jane would have a mixer with a dough hook.  Upon finding out we were out of luck on this one I repeatedly muttered, “This is bad, this is bad,” while remembering the graveyard of failed Easter Bread, all at the hands of people well equipped with Kitchen Aids.  Jane shrugged undeterred, “Breads have been around forever.  What did the good Italians use before electric mixers?  Love.”  And so into the wee hours of the morning she loved the dough, kneading and kneading until her arms were sore. 

 

 

 

 

It rose beautifully.  BEAU-TI-FULLY.  We baked it off the next morning (accidentally burning the largest loaf) and sat down to a brunch that became a dinner that ended again in the wee hours of the next morning. Our friend, Cait, arrived shortly after the last loaf came out of the oven.  She came with watery red eyes from early morning salsa making for Scott (her husband stupidly refuses to eat her sausage dip).  She came with candies, cakes, and toting an extra oven rack.  Jane, Caitlin, and I are used to such elaborate well planned meals.  It is our “family” tradition to prepare glorious plentiful meals every time the three of us meet which isn’t that often considering we’ve always lived in different states, now in different countries.  It is in those hours of food shopping, chopping, and waiting for things to simmer that our catching up is done, our intimate secrets are shared and our future plans are made, all with relentless laughter.  All of this, for us, was natural but our guests were put off.  They couldn’t understand why we would put in so much effort; give up so much sleep, use so much time. 

 

 

They stopped questioning when they started eating.  We ate sausage dip, guacamole, meat and cheese plates (with us there is always a cheese plate), Easter Bread, boiled eggs, ham with clove and pineapple, Brussels sprouts with mushrooms and a caramelized onion topping, Dutch oven root vegetables with a maple glaze, carrot cake, angel food cake, Italian Bonata cookies, chocolate wheat baskets stuffed with malted eggs, and oh was there chocolate!  English chocolates, American chocolates, nuts and raisins, and dark chocolate speckled with crystallized ginger.  This is only the food I remember a full year later.

 

Eventually, members of our American families called to wish us “Happy Easter” and laughed uproariously when they realized their dinner was done and cleaned up but we, five hours ahead of them, hadn’t even sat down to the main event yet; we were still too full from previous courses.  In our own time, and several bottles of wine later, we got to it.  I think that day and night was probably the best part of my trip.  Aside from all of the obvious reasons, there was something immensely satisfying about bringing a bit of my real family to my friend family.  And to pass on this satisfaction I share with you my Grandma’s Easter Bread recipe.  Let me just warn you though, Grandma is NOT keen on recipe sharing and I have hesitated about posting this but truly, if she really thought about it, I don’t think she’d mind some sharing among friends. 

 

 

 

 

Easter Bread

 

12 cups of unbleached flour (the family insists on Hecker’s)

2 sticks of butter, 1 salted and 1 unsalted or both the same* at room temperature

3 packets of fast rising yeast

1 dozen eggs at room temperature, plus 3 beaten egg whites for brushing

2 cups of sugar

Crisco

 

Melt the 2 sticks of butter plus 1 heaping tablespoon full of Crisco in a small pan stirring occasionally.  By “heaping” I mean stick a giant spoon in and sloppily pull it out, getting as much stuck around it as you can.  This is probably the equivalent of three massive (not level) tablespoons. Remove from heat until warm NOT hot.

 

Using a large measuring cup, proof your yeast by adding the 3 packets of yeast plus one teaspoon of sugar to 1 1/4 cups of warm water.

 

In the meantime, pour out 12 cups of flour and make a well.  Add the 2 cups of sugar to the well.  In a separate bowl beat together the dozen eggs.  Add the egg mixture approx 1 egg at a time to the center of  the well.  Use a fork to stir around the inside of the well (near the freshly added egg) to gradually incorporate the eggs with the flour/sugar.  Pour the warm butter and then the yeast mixture into the well, mixing together without letting any liquid escape out of the well.

 

When it’s just mixed separate the dough into four balls.  Beat each ball 10-15 mins in a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  If the balls appear very wet, add a little flour.  You can tell if it’s “too wet” if it makes a splashing sound against the side of the mixer.

 

Use the Crisco to grease a 20 quart pot.   As much as possible, try to set the dough balls next to each other rather than stack them although some stacking might be unavoidable.**  Wrap the pot LOOSELY with plastic wrap, taking care to make sure the wrap does NOT touch the dough and will NOT touch the dough as it begins to rise. My family insists you wrap the pots in bath towels.  Set it in the warmest spot of your house to rise for about 10 hours.

 

After ten hours, separate the dough into six distinct pieces.  With your hands gently form each piece into an oval, touching it as little as possible as not to deflate the dough.***  Put each piece on a parchment lined cookie sheet (or parchment lined plate) and allow each piece to rise for at least another 45 minutes.  You can loosely throw some plastic wrap over the top and cover with a dish towel but to prevent disruption in rising make sure nothing is actually ever touching the dough directly.  Once your oven is preheated to 350 degrees, bake on bottom shelf.  After ten minutes, remove the bread and use a pastry brush to brush with beaten egg whites.  If egg mixture isn’t spreading well you can add a splash of water.  Return bread to the TOP shelf of the oven and bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden.  Once you remove it from the oven, gently lift the parchment paper off the tray with the bread still on top, and set onto a cooling rack.  Do not remove the bread from it’s baking parchment for 10 minutes.

 

Extra loaves are great for giving or FREEZING for later.

 

 

*You remember my mother’s recipes, don’t you?  I used one of each to increase my odds of getting it right and it worked just fine but if you care to try it alternate ways go for it.

**The family likes one big pot but stacking makes me nervous so I usually divide the dough into two pieces and put each in a slightly smaller (but still large) pot.  After the ten hours I can divide each pot into three loaves.

***This gets sort of complicated but Grandma halves each loaf and loosely twists them together so that when they bake they appear braided.  I’m going to watch her do it this year and I’ll get back to you with more details but if it’s your first go at this I might stick to the oval loaf for best predicted results.