Cordelia Andreas’s Braided Bread

As I read Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters, I got a nagging craving for fresh, homemade bread.  Cordelia, the youngest sister, is pregnant, and when her nesting instincts kick in, she heads for the kitchen and whips up multiple loaves: St. Lucia bread, chocolate bread, Hawaiian bread – you name it.  The passage below will give your cravings “a rise” as well:

            There is nothing that is not beautiful about bread.  The way it grows, from tiny grains, from bowls on the counter, from yeast blooming in a measuring cup like swampy islands.  The way it feels a room, a house, a building, with its inimitable smells at every stage of the process.  The way it swells, submits to a firmly applied fist and contracts, swells again; the way it stretches and expands upon kneading, the warm supple fell of it against your skin.  The sight of a warm roll on a table, the taste – sweet, sour, yeasty on the tongue. (page 286)

           
Who knew baking bread could be so sexy?  So tempting?

In honor of Cordelia Andreas, the youngest (and my favorite) Weird Sister, I made Braided Bread.  The braided varieties were her favorites because she liked the challenge of getting the strips even, then tying them together in such a way that they were still distinct after baking.  Here’s the recipe:

King Lear - A Cautionary Tale for the Aging?

King Lear allotting his kingdom to his daughters by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1872

I admit it.  I haven’t read any Shakespeare since college, and that was (deep breath) nearly 20 years ago.  I’ve read a good deal of The Bard in my time, but, somehow, King Lear escaped my attention.  Book Phantom has remedied that.  When I began the play, I confess, the language was challenging.  I had to relearn how to read good Will.  I found it helpful to read aloud, because Shakespeare just sounds so darn good.  This exercise took me back to eleventh grade English in high school.  My teacher, Ms. Thomason, god bless her, had great taste in literature.  I give her full credit for instilling an appreciation of respectable reading.  Anyway, whenever we read plays aloud in class, Ms. Thomason almost always chose me to read the lead female parts.  That year I was Hedda Gabler, Medea, Antigone, and Lady Macbeth.  Either I was the only kid in class who could halfway read aloud, or Ms. T was trying to keep me from chatting up my neighbor across the aisle.  Nonetheless, I loved every minute of it, and this experience served me well when I read King Lear.

            Of all Shakespeare’s plays I could have chosen, why did I choose Lear?  Perhaps it’s because I am the youngest of three sisters, and I related to Cordelia.  Also, it seems so many books and movies reference Lear (A Thousand Acres comes to mind), and I needed to know more.  I was not disappointed – the word craft, the drama, the villains, the heroes, the tragedy – all timeless.