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Breads for Christ: European Easter Breads Shaped for the Season
| Article
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17887 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1999 |
2,659 Words |
| Author
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Sharon Hudgins
Sharon Hudgins is an author and journalist who lived for
fifteen years in Germany. Her ancestors emigrated from Prussia
to the United States in the 1860s. |
When the Easter season approaches, European kitchens are filled with the yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread, as cooks all over the Continent prepare the special loaves traditionally associated with this important religious holiday.
In the past, devout Christians observed a strict fast during the forty days of Lent, when they abstained from eating animal products of any kind: milk, butter, cheese, meat, lard, or eggs. When Easter finally arrived, they celebrated with a huge meal featuring a variety of dishes made from all the ingredients that had been prohibited during the previous six weeks. Although few people follow such fasts today, the tradition of feasting on special foods at Easter is still an important part of many European cultures.
Rich yeast-raised breads, full of butter, milk, and eggs, are an essential element of the Easter meal in many European countries. Often the breads are made in the shape of braids, wreaths, crosses, plants, or animals and elaborately decorated with icing, nuts, candies, fruits, or colored eggs. Homemade or bakery bought, these breads represent a continuity of Christian traditions from centuries past, although some derive their forms from pagan symbols dating from much earlier, pre-Christian times.
Different towns, countries, and regions of Europe have their own characteristic breads baked especially for Easter. Germans and Austrians make several versions of Osterzopf (Easter braid), Osterkranz (Easter wreath), and Striezel (stacked braided bread), as well as smaller breads in the shape of rabbits, lambs, chicks, and Easter baskets. The Czechs bake fancy Easter buns known as velikonocni pecivo. Many of these central European breads include one or more Easter eggs as part of the design, because eggs are a symbol of the regeneration of life.
Italy offers a particularly rich variety of regional Easter breads, including Genoa's pan dolce, full of raisins, candied fruit peel, and pine nuts; Umbria's cylindrical, cheese-flavored crescia; Venice's large fugassa di Pasqua buns; and Cesenatico's ring-shaped ciambelle, seasoned with anise and lemon peel. In Sicily, the edible centerpiece of the Easter meal is a large yeast bread shaped like a crown (representing Christ's crown of thorns), with colored eggs embedded in it. And in some parts of Italy an old custom is still followed when Easter breads are made: The shell of the first egg put into the dough is cracked on the head of a young boy--supposedly to keep bad luck at
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