You know that Staples commercial which features the big red easy button that customers are supposed to press to make their shopping experience as smooth as possible?
I joke with my husband that in life we always opt for the hard button - making daily experiences as complicated as possible.
This was the case a few weeks ago as we prepared for Easter. As usual we had planned on putting together our traditional Slovak basket of food to be blessed at church - the ham, kilbassa, Paska bread, nut, apricot and poppy seed rolls. My husband takes care of baking the bread and, in the past, had also taken care of the rolls.
We have not had good luck with our rolls. We have a family recipe that for some reason falls short each time. The dough on the top cracks or they don't raise enough or the filling oozes out of the sides. It is frustrating for sure, especially after you use almost a bag of flour and forget the price on walnuts these days!
This year my husband said, "I'm out. You want rolls - you can make them. Or make it easy on yourself and just buy them."
"Buy them?" I thought for a moment. Imagining the pure ease of just opening the package and placing them gently inside my basket. Now that is easy and I was starting to see the advantage to that kind of rogue living.
But then the little voice in my head starting making some chatter. "You come from a distinguished line of proud women bakers. Are you really going to throw in the towel? Are you going to shame the name of all that is Eastern European?"
So I was dealing with a mental tug-o-war. I figured I could buy them from a local church and at least justify my sixty dollar donation. But Holy Week is not the time to be looking for rolls from churches. By that time the ship has sailed. Now it was on to local bakeries. I found two options - one close by - one a bit of a drive. My husband made the decision seem so easy. "Please, just go to Patti's (Patti's Pasticceria in White Oak). It's close and you're done."
Oh if only I wasn't OCD. Friday morning I found myself driving around looking for cake yeast and poppy seed filling. I decided I wasn't going to use the family recipe. I was going off book. I picked a recipe from a cookbook my aunt bought me when I got my first apartment. It was a cookbook compiled by members of her church and each entry featured the parishioner's name and their special dish. It came down to Tom's Easy Nut Rolls or 2-Hour Rolls.
Nothing against Tom, but his yield was more than I needed. I didn't want to take the chance of having to cut the recipe in half and mess something up, again. So I went with Bev's 2-Hour Roll recipe and in two hours I was hoping to have some nice basket worthy specimen.
In honor of my Grandma Bishop, who always donned a bandana when she baked, I got my red headscarf and was almost ready to rock n' roll. But first.. I needed to pray. I needed a higher power to intercede on my behalf of my dough.
I asked my daughter to find the patron saint of baking and that is when we learned about Saint Honoratus of Port-le-Grand, France, who served as a bishop in the late sixth century. Apparently, after his death, praying to him helped stop floods and droughts ensuring a prosperous wheat crop. This made him a good friend to bakers.
There is even a cake named after the saint. The St. Honore cake was invented in Paris. It's a ring-shaped pastry filled with pastry cream and airy Italian meringue, topped with small cream puffs dipped in caramelized sugar, and draped with whipped cream. I don't know about you, but I'd wouldn't turn down a piece!
Anyway, my daughter and I prayed together and let the raising begin. I don't know if it was the recipe but, during the course of an hour, the rolls tripled in size. I thought to myself even if they don't taste good, they sure will look good. When I cut them up, to put a few easy to snack on pieces in my basket, I did a taste test. To be honest, they could have used a little more filling but I was satisfied. Everyone who tasted them said they were good so I will used the recipe again - just add more of the good stuff.
So a special thank you to Bev for sharing her recipe and a special thank you to St. Honoratus. His feast is coming up on May 16. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Ring shaped pastry filled with Italian meringue?
No comments:
Post a Comment