Despite my griping on Friday the Easter baking went well. Three ham pies and three Easter breads were baked and (hopefully) will be enjoyed this week.
The Easter breads I did at home, with an assist from my beloved Kitchen-Aid mixer’s dough hook and a brand new bread proofing machine that my MIL purchased.
My kitchen is chilly and I have trouble sometimes getting dough to rise. The proofing machine performs (IMO) comparably to letting the bread rise in the oven with the light on, but with this method I can preheat the oven without having to remove the dough back into the chilly environment.
No gatekeeping here: here is the recipe for Easter bread that I use. WM doesn’t like anise so I’m going to experiment with making a loaf with almond extract for him.
This year I made ham pies with Mom at her house. There are very tasty-looking recipes for Italian Easter pies out there, but these are based on a handwritten recipe that my grandmother mailed to my mother in the late 90s. The original recipe … wasn’t accurate. Here is my mom’s translation of that letter, angrily annotated by me as we refine the process every year.
Can you feel the frustration that surrounded the This is 1 pie note? I still do.
Could we go all out and pounds of cheese and pepperoni and prosciutto to this recipe and make that pie a two-inch tall protein bomb? Yes. Would that destroy the childhood memories we have of these pies? Also yes.
I accidentally discovered that Mom’s sun-dappled kitchen table makes for a fantastic background for baking photos. Look at this!
I probably could have turned the egg carton around but that sunshine and the wooden table top is Instagram perfection. Here is one of the three finished pies, marked with an R to claim it as my own.
My breakfast today? Coffee, a slice of bread, and a slice of pie. I hope your weekend was lovely and filled with everything you wanted it to have.
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