Well it’s Easter weekend so I thought I’d make some paska. Paska is Ukrainian Easter bread, it’s sweet and it has icing on top. It’s more of a dessert than anything else. I first had paska in Saskatchewan, we made lots of it for Easter and I remember that the cooks gave me a loaf to bring home since the students were gone and, well somebody had to eat the left overs.

So I got up this morning and decided to try it out. I had never made paska before, only seen people make it. To my great disappointment the dough did not seem to rise, even after an hour the size was exactly the same. You know, I’m “used” to see bread doughs rise quite quickly, even after 30 minutes, it’s obvious it’s growing. So I waited a little bit more and since there was no sign of rising, I put the dough in a plastic bag that I was probably going to throw away when I wouldn’t feel so bad about it, I don’t like wasting food but I knew I couldn’t do anything with a dough that simply didn’t rise. So I put the bag in my room so that nobody would remind me I knew nothing about baking. At the end of the afternoon and went to my room and noticed that the bag had gotten bigger - I started to hope. I punched it down and placed the dough into a big bowl to let it rise again. I’ve been sneaking under the cover every once in a while to see how it’s doing and it’s rising.

So anyways, don’t forget to be very patient with paska bread. The pictures are the dough “before and while” rising.