Lenten Reflection 10: Pascha Bread

It's Holy Friday. George is taking a nap. Kyla and Stephanie have gone to decorate the bier (where the icon of Christ will be laid after he is taken down from the cross). I am home to get ready for tomorrow night. I am making Pascha Bread. I've tried this before with limited success. This is a new recipe, but they are all variations on a theme: lots of butter, sugar, and about a dozen eggs. It's like a large, baked donut.

The bread is rising right now. I am reflecting in the meantime on baking as worship. This is something I struggle with. Baking can be more of a frustrating experience for me. But at times I take joy in preparing food that my family loves to eat. I will make my famous shortbread cookies later, to thunderous applause. OK, it's actually Betty Crocker's recipe, but the point is that there is a kind of sacrifice that goes into the art of cooking, a way you put your soul into every knead.

Orthodox women understand this. For the family matriarchs -- the real power-holders in the church -- cooking is something mystical, maybe magical. I get that sense when I read my Orthodox recipe book, with a list of contributions from families from a church in Massachusetts. It's like cooking something they just know how to do. Asking them to explain the steps to the process reads like asking a spider to explain how she weaves a web. So the directions are always difficult to follow.

But I have learned a couple of things so far. First, I have learned that I need a bigger bowl. My original plan was to double the recipe and save some dough to use later. But I would need a bathtub for that. It's hard to cram 15 cups of sifted flour, a dozen eggs, three cups of butter, and a cup of sugar into the biggest bowl I have. The second lesson I had learned before, but in this case I had forgotten. When preparing traditional Orthodox meals, I need to cut the recipe in half. Not only would the ingredients fit better into my bowl, but I would be able to eat it. Looking at the large ball of dough sitting on my counter top (that I'm praying rises properly), I have no idea how we are going to eat it all.

Actually, we will eat it all, if it turns out OK. We will eat the baked donut, the cookies, eggs, and chocolates, and we will love every minute of it...tomorrow (Sunday, if you want to get technical).