Poppyseed

All that’s left now is wrapping. Today’s principal job was making the Carreras family poppyseed bread. My grandmother brought the tradition with her from Hungary and baked many loaves for the family every Easter and Christmas.
In our house, it wasn’t Christmas without them. But Grandma was not the recipe-sharing type. If you asked her, she’d say it was simple – just a pinch of this and a thimbleful of that. Only the very brave asked twice.
She died without sharing the recipe. And several of us worked unsuccessfully for years to recreate what she had done. Then along came the internet, and I was able to piece together from German and Hungarian bakers what they did with what I remembered. The result is very close to what Grandma made.
Now, on to family politics. Over the past five years, I’ve discovered how hard it is to fill these evenly. It’s easy to over or underfill, leave voids, and generally not get perfect filling. I’ve discussed this with my sister, who is four years older than me and watched the “poppyseed bread politics” play out over the years.
If you were on Grandma’s naughty list, your poppyseed loaf came with voids and little filling. On the good list? Well, your loaf was bursting with filling. It was also one of the ways she played favorites with her large and unwieldy family.
I struggle to get even filling, but I prefer to keep a less-than-full loaf at home rather than continue that familial tradition.