Ingredients:
9. While cooling, mix anise (to taste), powdered sugar and milk to make icing.
I loved the aroma of anise and having freshly baked bread all to myself - no sharing! My grandmother passed away in 1999, when I was 17 years old (and as previously mentioned, barely capable of boiling water). Not quite ten years later, my first attempt at making it myself was a total disaster. I was spending the Easter holiday with a friend's parents on Lake Oconee in Georgia, so I opted to blame the humidity. Last year, when my then-two-month old son got his first loaf (doll-shaped and happily consumed by his mother), I marveled at how much they resembled each other!
Growing up in a small town in upstate New York with a big Italian community, I never wondered about the origins of this recipe or the tradition of the doll shape. As a graduate student studying anthropology, I attended a lecture on food and culture, where the speaker discussed a village on the coast of Spain and described the same Easter tradition. This year, remembering that talk, I finally turned to Google to explore it further and discovered that many Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese families share similar recipes. Although there are many names and variations (including a wide variety of braids and baskets studded with hardboiled eggs), the one closest to our family tradition is pupa con l'uova, very simply, a doll with egg.
Bread
Butter, melted, 1 stick
Canola oil, 1/4 cup
Milk, slightly warm, 1/2 cup
Yeast, 3 packages, dissolved in 1/3 cup warm water with 1 tbsp sugar
Sugar, 2 cups
Anise, 2 tbsp
Eggs (8)
Flour, 10 cups
Egg, hardboiled (optional)
Icing (optional)
Anise
Powdered sugar
Milk
Nonpareil candy sprinkles, multicolored
Directions:
1. Mix butter, oil, warm milk and dissolved yeast in in mixing bowl.
2. Beat in sugar and anise.
3. Beat in one egg at a time.
4. Add flour until you have a nice smooth dough.
5. Knead until somewhat shiny.
6. Let rise several hours, shape and let rise a couple of hours more. If you are shaping into the traditional doll shape, you may want a hardboiled egg (with shell on) to use in place of the doll's face.
7. Bake at 350˚F for 20 minutes.
8. Allow to cool.
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| My mom and the mixing bowl, March 2012 |
10. Ice and decorate with sprinkles if desired.
Note: YOU CAN CUT THIS RECIPE IN HALF. It will raise faster.
The story: Every year, my grandmother Ida baked this bread into doll- and football-shaped loaves for the many members of our family - more than 30 loaves in all, preparing in huge batches in a giant, custom-made stainless steel mixing bowl. She baked every day during Holy Week; everyone stopped over after church to have some with their coffee. Adults got ring-shaped loaves, with one giant ring just for Easter morning.
I loved the aroma of anise and having freshly baked bread all to myself - no sharing! My grandmother passed away in 1999, when I was 17 years old (and as previously mentioned, barely capable of boiling water). Not quite ten years later, my first attempt at making it myself was a total disaster. I was spending the Easter holiday with a friend's parents on Lake Oconee in Georgia, so I opted to blame the humidity. Last year, when my then-two-month old son got his first loaf (doll-shaped and happily consumed by his mother), I marveled at how much they resembled each other!Growing up in a small town in upstate New York with a big Italian community, I never wondered about the origins of this recipe or the tradition of the doll shape. As a graduate student studying anthropology, I attended a lecture on food and culture, where the speaker discussed a village on the coast of Spain and described the same Easter tradition. This year, remembering that talk, I finally turned to Google to explore it further and discovered that many Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese families share similar recipes. Although there are many names and variations (including a wide variety of braids and baskets studded with hardboiled eggs), the one closest to our family tradition is pupa con l'uova, very simply, a doll with egg.
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| My sister (looking startlingly like her nephew) and my grandmother, c. 1985 |
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