What Teaching Myself to Make Portuguese Sweet Bread is Teaching Me

Listen to this story read by Alayne here.

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ADVENTURE
I am an adventurous baker these days- challenging myself with complicated yeast recipes trying my literal hands and heart at them. I don’t research You Tube videos first, I enjoy the courtship of this first date of a recipe I have never seen anyone make. I have only tried homemade sweet bread from two different women, both from the Azorean Island of Sao Miguel and they were both memorable.
PATIENCE
There is simply no way to use a Kitchen Aid mixer for this recipe. It must be kneaded by hand. Because I have never made it before, I didn’t have a sense for what the dough was supposed to feel like when fully kneaded. I learned quickly that sweet bread dough, called Massa Sovada in Portuguese, is sticky, messy, and time consuming. It is about patience.
STRENGTH
Sweet Bread is not for the faint hearted. Kneading is not to be taken lightly. There is a slapping, hitting, pulling, back and forth over and over again to the process and your whole upper body must go into the motion. It is also a strength of the heart, because making Sweet Bread needs kneading, but it also needs your intention without distraction.
PREPARATION
Once kneaded by hand for what I learned should have been longer than I allowed for the first attempt, after the first rise, it is covered with plastic wrap that is sprayed with cooking spray, then covered by towels and wrapped in blankets to keep warm while it rises for five to six hours. Really. Wrapped in blankets. Because if the house is not warm, the bread will not rise and this is disastrous for Sweet Bread.

PLANNING
If a Sweet Bread recipe is expected for Sunday breakfast, this means that it is started the night before and an alarm is set for five hours later so the baker wakes up in time to prepare. The bread is then divided into individual pans for the second rise to occur for two hours if you are lucky, but more likely four hours later. Then, and only if it was kept warm enough for that rise to occur, can it be placed in the oven to bake for an hour.
UNDERSTANDING
I had assumed that Massa Sovada, as it is called in Sao Miguel, translates literally into Sweet Bread, but it really means kneaded bread. I found an article where someone said it meant Hit Hard. This piqued my curiosity.
LEARNING
I looked around and saw other definitions- thrashed, beaten, worn out. Once I learned this, I understood how important the kneading step is when it comes to Sweet Bread. The act of kneading is so important that it is the actual meaning. The fact that it requires such aggression yet rewards with such a sweet light bread for all the hard labor and time makes this one of the most ironic recipes I have tried.

BEAUTY
Another irony is in the juxtaposition of where Sweet Bread comes from- one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited- Sao Miguel, one of the beautiful Azorean Islands, but because of economic hardships, thousands of its residents needed to find work by leaving its beauty. This makes this Sweet Bread even sweeter and more meaningful as it is also an immigration story.
FOCUS
One cannot enter into a date with this recipe in the kitchen with any hesitation or trepidation. You must approach the dough with focus, you can not multi-task. Your mind must be clear, without distress and worry. The dough will pick up your energy. Really.
LOVE
Making Sweet Bread is a labor of love. It takes practice, trial and error, determination. The satisfaction that comes from seeing the perfectly risen round golden loaves knowing they will be wrapped and given to some of your favorite friends and neighbors and this is the main reason to keep at learning and enjoying the process. Love is all there is when you are feeling down; baking Sweet Bread lifts my heart. This is a recipe for my life every time.

RECIPE NOTE

I followed Maria Lawton’s recipe from her fabulous cookbook, At My Portuguese Table. When I searched for the recipe on her website, The Azorean Greenbean, it was quite a bit different than the cookbook. I am no expert, but I know Sweet Bread experts in my beautiful town of Bristol, RI. so I listen to their expertise. I would buy her cookbook and follow that recipe.

Make sure you use Canadian Five Roses Flour. It comes in 5 1/2 pound bags as opposed to a the American version which are five pound bags. I add lemon zest from a whole lemon. This tip comes from one of my favorite local Sweet Bread rockstars. The recipe makes 6-9 loaves depending on the pans you use. There are actual Sweet Bread pans, I bought them at my favorite local hardware store also in Bristol, RI, that everyone knows as Andy’s. Portuguese markets would definitely have them, it is worth getting in your car and heading to one rather than ordering them online. There is just something so much sweeter about the whole experience that makes for a better Sweet Bread.