A family tradition
One definition of word Tradition in Merriam-Webster Dictionary is this:
Tradition: a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, etc., for a long time.
In my mind tradition is something that defines a family. My immediate family had and still has a very erratic, disorganized life style and consequently no tradition that I could refer to. That is why I had to look up in the dictionary to find a more complex definition. Using the above listed definition I was able to identify an old family holiday ritual that is as close to a tradition as possible.
During my childhood, at Christmas time, a couple of days before December 24th was the day that we made traditional sweet bread named cozonac. The process was very elaborate. It required a lot of physical work, attention to select the ingredients, the quantities of each ingredient, perfect timing for the dough to rise, perfect room temperature, perfect oven temperature, perfect timing to bake the loafs. All this intense effort was rewarded by taking out the oven perfectly golden brown loafs, tall and shiny, staffed with delicious ingredients like yellow raisins, walnuts, and small colorful pieces of Turkish delight. When we cut slices or pulled apart, the sweet bread will open in rich, flavorful slices of sheer gastronomic pleasures.
To achieve this beautiful outcome, my mother and father will wake up at about 3am. Mother will combine the ingredients in a
large wooden tab. My father will start to knead the dough to perfect consistency. At this point the dough was let to rest and rise for 2
hours. During this time the parents will have a cup of coffee and get ready to leave for work. Before leaving, my mother will separate
the raised dough into baking forms brushed with butter and powdered with flour. The dough needs to rise again in forms before going in the oven. My paternal grandmother will take over, supervising the dough rise in forms. When the dough was ready to go into oven she will brash the tops with egg wash and place it in the oven. She lived with us. Years went by and I did not continue the tradition. I am not a good baker.
Twenty years ago, when my mother joined us in California, this tradition was brought back. She will get busy with baking the traditional sweet bread at Christmas.
In the beginning things were not easy. In California the ingredients, even the basic ones like flour, sugar and butter react to each other very different than the ones she was used to. She had to learn everything from scratch by talking with other Romanians that lived here longer and solved the secret of successful sweet bread. Now, she moved back to Europe and our tradition is broken again.
I hope one day, my beautiful, curious and hardworking granddaughter might be interested to revive and continue the family tradition. Actually, there is a recipe that my mother developed here in California that gives wonderful results for one who wants to put the effort into it.