When my
grandmother made her sweet bread it was a special occasion. I would
watch her as she gathered her ingredients, enough for our large household, our
close relatives and any visitors who came to the house. No one would ever leave
without a large chunk or a small loaf if they came by after knowing she was
baking her bread. In a big basin about two feet deep and just as wide, she
would pour a cloud of flour and sugar making a valley in the center so that she
could fill it with a pool of eggs, sugar and whiskey. With all of her
ingredients meticulously measured and placed in their own time, with the
greatest care and grace of hand, she would kneed and fold the sweet dough with
her delicate hands. Her fingers danced with the dough as she stretched from the
edges and plunged back into the center of the large mound. When the dough was
the perfect consistency, she would then mark the height it should rise to at
the top of the width of her four fingers. With a whispered blessing she would
imprint the top of the dough with the sign of the cross and cover the basin
with a cheesecloth and thick blanket, as if it were a sleeping baby, and set it
aside. Only hours later would we finally find that the dough had grown to the
height she marked with her four fingers and she would then begin the process of
dividing the dough into a dozen greased pans. Watching my grandmother make her
sweet bread was just as much fun as it was eating it. To me it was like
observing a scientist conduct an experiment with expert precision and
astounding results.
My grandmother's
sweet bread recipe was like no other version that I've never tasted in my
thirty-two years of life. I've tried other varieties of the bread from
relatives who have made it and bought loaves from local bakeries, but they just
weren't the same. Her version was firm, but moist, with the slightest hint of
lemon and whiskey that would pull all of the other ingredients together and
melt on the tongue like warm butter. In the Portuguese culture this desert is a
widely cherished and very popular food for both the casual consumption and
considered a standard at any special occasion. It wasn't unusual for my
brothers and I to wake up on Easter morning, trailing the sweet sent of freshly
baked bread and find our own individual loaves baked with an egg nesting in the
center, waiting for us on the kitchen counter. Our little hands would dig into
the warm loaves that came out of the oven just a few hours before, baked while
we were still tucked into our beds dreaming of the Easter bunny. We would
excavate the eggs, crack them open and in one hand we would bite into the hard
cooked egg and in the other, bite into our little loaf slathered in butter
until they were completely devoured. It was something that was a staple with my
grandmother and something I've missed very much since she passed away six years
ago.
About a month
ago, I told my mother that I wanted to attempt making my grandmother's sweet bread
with her. It was decided that we would do it in September when I could come
home for my next visit, between her birthday and my grandmother's. I don't like
to celebrate my own birthdays but I hate the thought of my parents not
celebrating theirs, even if it's with just a hug and a small cake. It's never a
big deal to them, but I like for them to know that people care, that I care. This year I also wanted to
memorialize my grandmother's birthday, which takes place over the following
weekend, in the best way my family knows how to show their love–through food. Frankly, my mother doesn't believe I
know how to cook. Unless it was boiling spaghetti or stirring the concoctions
she made so as they wouldn't burn on the stove while she did other things, I didn't
get to do much when I was growing up. Where I learned to cook was not just from
watching the Food Network, but first and foremost from my mother, my
grandmother and even my father. While I should have been doing my homework, I was
really, spending that time watching them chop this, stuff that or sauté, fry,
bake or boil all kinds of edible arrangements. But for this occasion, my mother
invited her greatest ally to join us, her cousin Donaria. Donaria is my
mother's first cousin, which made her my second. She was always more like an
aunt to me, as she is older than even my own mother. I never felt comfortable
calling her a cousin because that word was always reserved for snot nosed kids,
like myself, and her children, whom my brothers and I grew up with. They were my cousins, not their mother. Calling
her a cousin felt like I was calling my mother or father by their first names.
Someone older, with more authority always had a title reserved for a higher hierarchy,
so I would just call her Donaria or Tia Donaria. As I got older and began to
match the intellectual level of my seniors, then I began to give her the title
that made us equals, and so she was now Prima Donaria. For this experiment, three
heads were certainly better than one, and with my head still drowsy from the
long drive home and my mother being heavily medicated with treatments for her
Lymphoma, Donaria's clarity would not only ascertain a better result, but her
presence was a testament to the bond we three shared with my grandmother.
Saturday
morning I got home just in time to see the sunrise and my parents up and at it
with coffee in hand and a welcoming smile on their faces. I didn't bother to even
take a nap because I didn't want to waste time. So I stayed up the full
thirty-six hours and finally crashed later that night. But, before I knew it,
the intercom was buzzing and Donaria was at the door, arms hugging the largest
bowl I had ever laid eyes on, and a five-pound sack of flour surfing the center
of the saucer. Operation sweet bread was underway.
After gathering
what we thought was all of the necessary ingredients it seemed we had forgotten
a key ingredient, the whiskey. Oh dear.
I hadn't even had my coffee yet and I was already heading to the liquor store.
One glance at the clock told me this wasn't going to be a comfortable
experience. Had I known of any other liquor stores to go to without having to
pull out my GPS to find its location, I would have gone there instead, but I
just wanted to get this over with and pulled up at the nearest store located
just down the street from my parents' apartment. In a big city it would not
phase a soul to walk into a liquor store at eleven o'clock on a Saturday
morning for a nip of whiskey, but for a lone female to do it in a quiet suburb
located next door to a high brow Christian church–you are judged. When I pulled
up to the store, the clerk was just unlocking the door when he saw me with
furrowed brows, exit my car and walk up to the door. Two large men followed me
in, bee-lined to the location of their beverages of choice and were already in
line behind me before I was able to spot the nips behind the counter. l tried
to make it seem as though walking into a liquor store was the most natural
thing to do, like I was at a grocery store buying milk, but when I got to the
counter and asked for a nip of whiskey my voice suddenly sounded very small and
cracked between "whis-" and "key" like I was a pubescent fourteen
year-old boy. The man asked me which brand I wanted and I just threw out
"Jack Daniels" like I knew the difference. I could feel the heat on
my face beginning to burn blisters on my skin when the clerk asked for my ID
and I noticed the eyes of the men in line behind me ogling my purchase and one
of them smirking at me like I was a regular at his AA meetings. It took the
clerk with judgmental eyes a good two minutes to finally hand back my New York
State ID with some reservation. When I handed over my payment I didn't even
wait for a bag or my twenty-five cents. "Keep the change." I just
grabbed the nip, threw it in my purse, and walked out of the store. Outside I
ducked into my car and drove away like I was hiding from the police or mob of
paparazzi.
Back at home, Donaria
and my mother took one look at me as I entered and started laughing at my
indignation. They didn't say a thing when I left, but when I got back they
didn't seem the least bit hesitant on expressing how awkward it was going to be
for me to run this errand. Thanks guys,
so glad you had yourselves a good laugh. I suppose it was no big deal and
probably just very old fashioned of me to think that anyone would really care
what my drinking habits were this day in age, but I still live in the land of Little House On The Prairie at times and
I don't particularly cherish the idea that people in this town might be judging
me or my family over the thought that I could be an alcoholic. They do enough
talking here as it is.
With all of the
ingredients finally present and accounted for, my mother began to sort out measurements
according to the list. The thing with my grandmother's recipe is that she had
her technique down to a science, but she never wrote that part down. It was
something that she cultivated with time and through trial and error and there
was no need for her to write it down. It was all done by memory and she just
kept a list of ingredients and rough idea of the measurements as a checklist.
Now it was up to the three of us to figure out the technique by conjuring up
the eight year old memory of the last time she made her sweet bread. I was with
my grandmother that very last time she made it, from the beginning to the end,
but again, that was eight years ago and I didn't think that was going to be the
last time I was ever going to witness the marvel. While the yeast was
fermenting in a bowl, my mother called out the ingredients and I handed Donaria
the sack of flour, she poured it in with the sugar, pushing the pile to the
sides of the bowl to make the valley in the center where my mother cracked the
eggs into its center. After the butter was melted and the peel of a lemon
scraped, they were slowly added in increments to the center of the bowl with
the nip of whiskey. While Donaria had the job of mixing the ingredients to form
the dough I wondered with uncertainty whether the order we used to mix the
ingredients might not have been quite right. There was something that seemed
off with our timing and I was not satisfied with its consistency. If my memory
served me right, I remembered the process taking much longer when my
grandmother did it but I couldn't put my finger on what it was that we were
missing and I was afraid to verbalize it to them because they looked so pleased
with the results. I could clearly see my grandmother's hands massaging the sticky
dough, stretching it with a pull of her fingers like a massive wad of freshly
chewed gum. This dough looked drier and slightly frangible, which worried me. I
finally questioned my mother’s accuracy in transcription of the ingredients
from my grandmother’s list, which was originally written in Portuguese, and if
maybe she forgot to write down milk as ingredient. Her reaction to my question
was not exactly what I expected. Suddenly she became almost threatening when I
questioned the memory of her own mother. If this were an episode of Ally McBeal
she would have sprouted horns, a tail and I would have fallen victim to her
fire breathing abilities. Let's just say that no more was said on that topic
and I just shut my mouth and smiled assuredly. It's very rare that my mother
gets in that state. I was sure it was because she wanted this to work just as
badly as I did, and making it seem like I knew my grandmother better than she
did must have felt like a slap in the face to her, so I just let it be.
Four hours
later we peeked at the dough and it was far from rising. I only had to voice
the opinion once before I was shut down by my opinion. Again, I remembered the
dough taking many hours to make its full ascent but it was always a very
noticeable rise after four hours. This was less than half an inch bigger. By
five o'clock there was probably a one-inch rise and at this point my mother and
cousin found some validity to my observation and decided to add a little milk
and mix the dough another turn. Three hours later the dough had risen another
inch and was separated into their individually greased pans and left to rise a
little more. I think my mother began to trust that I had some valid cooking
experience and that my memory was a little more astute than she gave me credit
for. It was never my intension to discredit her ability but it was nice to be
accepted into the clan that seemed reserved for the old world cooks of previous
generations.
By eleven
o'clock the bread was in the oven and rising to a golden brown. The familiar
sweet scent of my grandmother's bread permeated the apartment and our mouths
were swimming with saliva for that first bite. Less than an hour later we were
pulling the bread out of the oven and Donaria cut one of the loaves in half. Beautiful. It was slightly denser than
my grandmother's and had a slightly darker shade on the crust, but it was the
best sweet bread we've eaten since my grandmother's passing. We had a few kinks
to work out, but we now knew what we were doing for the next time. With each of
us holding a piece of the warm sweet bread in our hands we kissed each other on
the cheeks and with a whisper of gratitude for our beloved grandmother, mother
and aunt, we took a bite of the bread and smiled with satisfaction.
My
Grandmother's sweet bread was something that many of us looked forward to every
year that she spent living with us, between the time she was hopping between her
two homes in America and in Portugal, she always brought her traditions with
her where she landed. Her last homecoming was in March of 2006 and just two months
later, one of the most tragic things that I had ever experienced had happened
with her passing and with that her sweet bread was never consumed since. This
year, I was determined to bring back the practice, celebrating the two women in
my life that have meant more to me than the very air I breathe and with the
fortitude of two generations we made a third generation recipe with a whole lot
of love guiding us. My only regret was that we should have done this sooner.
How many loaves of sweet bread could we have enjoyed between those six years
since my grandmother's passing had we made the commitment sooner? However, what
better time than now to begin the tradition again?
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