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The Taste of the Dough
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
96 The Taste of the Dough Dur ing our years of in creas ing pov erty, my mother’s skill at shap ing dough into sur pris ing shapes was all that re mained alive of her love of things Ital ian. In her travels to Italy she had made a last ing dis cov ery: how to use the magic of shap ing the dough to free us from the sad re al ity of our pov erty and hun ger. She was per haps the first who, be fore the Ital ian oc cu pa tion, brought to her na tive land the se crets of spa ghetti, mac a roni, la sagna, and many, many other Ital ian en chant ments made of dough. With a lit tle flour and water, and much love and ar tistry, she in dulged the dap pled il lu sions of our child hood. Al though, in ac tu al ity, we al ways ate the same dough through out our days of pov erty, it al ways seemed as if Mother had made us some thing new. She of course fol lowed the fam ily tra di tions of mix ing dough to make Balkan-style noo dles, round loaves, pitas, bu reks, and rolls, but with the added Ital ian magic for shap ing the dough, she in creased our sense of her Med i ter ra nean dream, the il lu sion of her travel from long ago. No mat ter how much my mother wished to re tain her mem o ries of that dis tant Ital ian voy age, the pass ing of time brought for get ful ness; and yet she never for got how to shape the dough Ital ian style. That had be come a part of her life; it was in her blood. It had be come one of the bare ne ces sities of our life. My mother passed on to us chil dren her love of twist ing the dough into ever more fan ci ful shapes. Often, our mouths filled with the doughy shapes, we felt the touch of our mother’s hands. This taste lin gered a long time in our lives, even after we had left be hind our years of pov erty. ...