I have saved the question of fermented beverages for the last chapter of this book not because it is the least important of the topics addressed in Part Five — it is not — but because it is the most theologically contested, and I have learned over the course of a long teaching career that contested questions are better encountered after the reader has been established in the author’s general approach to reasoning than before. By this point in the book, the reader knows how I think about the relationship between the letter and the spirit of the commandment, how I approach questions that the Scripture does not address with complete explicitness, and how I hold my own positions with conviction while acknowledging the legitimate reasoning behind positions that differ from mine. She is therefore better prepared to encounter the beverage question than she would have been in the front matter, and I am better prepared to present it honestly, because we have been in conversation long enough for her to know what I mean when I say that a question is genuinely difficult.
The beverage question is genuinely difficult.
Let me state the difficulty plainly before we discuss its resolution. The commandment removes leaven from the house during the seven days of the feast. We have established, across sixteen chapters and a substantial quantity of flour, that biological leaven is the primary and most directly addressed category, that chemical leavening presents a reasoned case for Level 2 removal, and that mechanical leavening presents an equally reasoned case for Level 3 removal. Now: what about beverages whose character is the product of biological fermentation?
The grain-fermented beverages — ales, certain traditional grain beers, and any beverage produced by the fermentation of grain — present, in my view and in the view of the majority of Bravian religious scholarship on the matter, a clear and straightforward answer. A grain-fermented beverage is produced by exactly the same biological process as a leavened bread: wild or cultivated yeasts ferment the sugars of the grain, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. The yeast in a fermenting grain beverage is biologically identical to the yeast in a leavening culture. The process is the same. The product, while liquid rather than solid, is the direct fruit of the leavening organism operating on grain in the same way it operates in a leavened dough. Grain-fermented beverages are, in this reading, liquid chametz — leavened grain preparations in a different physical form — and they are removed from the Bravian household during the Days of Unleavened Bread along with the leavened bread and the sourdough starter, without serious dispute in most Bravian communities.
The fruit-fermented beverages — wine, cider, fruit-based fermented preparations of various kinds — present a more complex picture, and it is here that the genuine theological discussion begins. The fermentation of grape juice into wine involves yeast, and the yeast involved is biologically similar to the yeast involved in bread leavening. Does wine, therefore, constitute a leavened preparation in the sense of the commandment?
The answer given by the overwhelming consensus of Bravian religious scholarship, ancient and modern, is no — and the reasoning is important enough to state clearly. The commandment specifically addresses leaven as a substance whose identity is defined by its relationship to grain: the word se’or, as I explained in Chapter 1, refers to the old leavened dough or starter culture kept from batch to batch, a grain preparation. The fermented fruit beverage has no grain in it. The yeast that produces wine operates on the sugars of fruit rather than on the starches of grain, and the product of that fermentation — alcohol, carbon dioxide, and the complex flavor compounds of fermented fruit — is categorically different from the product of grain fermentation: not chametz, not se’or, not the leaven the commandment addresses. Wine is not bread, and the process that makes wine is not the process the commandment targets.
This is why wine appears at the Passover table itself as part of the commanded service. This is why the Bravian feast has always been celebrated with wine. The commandment does not remove fermentation from the table. It removes grain-based fermentation from the table, and the distinction between the two is not a technicality invented for the purpose of retaining a beverage one happens to enjoy. It is a theologically grounded, textually supported distinction that has been part of the Bravian understanding of the feast from the beginning.
I say this at some length because I have encountered, in certain corners of Bravian religious life, a position that extends the removal of all fermentation during the feast season to include wine and all fruit-fermented beverages, on the grounds that fermentation itself — any fermentation, by any organism, of any substrate — partakes of the character of leaven and should be avoided. This position exists and is held by sincere and thoughtful people, and I record it here as I have recorded the Level 3 position throughout this book: without dismissal, but also without endorsement. The theological case for it, in my careful reading, does not hold against the weight of what the text actually says and against the evidence of the Scripture’s own inclusion of wine in the Passover service. I do not follow it in my own practice or recommend it to others, but I acknowledge it exists.
With this established, let us talk about what to drink.
On Wine at the Bravian Festival Table
Wine occupies a position at the Bravian festival table that is different from its position in ordinary meals, and understanding this difference is important for the baker who is preparing the full festival table rather than simply the bread.
At the Passover table, wine is a commanded element of the service. The traditional Passover service of the Bravian community includes the drinking of multiple cups of wine — typically four, though practice varies somewhat between communities — at specific points in the service, and these cups are not optional embellishments but integral parts of the ritual structure of the evening. The first cup accompanies the sanctification of the day; the second accompanies the telling of the story of the deliverance; the third accompanies the grace after the meal; and the fourth accompanies the concluding praise. Each cup of wine marks a transition in the service and in the meal, and the feast table without wine at these moments is missing something that the commandment itself has placed there.
The grape juice alternative, which I address in detail below, is a legitimate option for those households where wine is not appropriate — for children, for those who cannot drink wine for health reasons, for households that prefer fresh grape juice on principle — and it has a long history in the Bravian feast tradition as a parallel observance to the wine. But the reader should understand that grape juice at the Passover is an accommodation rather than an equivalent: the commanded element is wine, and those households that can observe with wine and choose to do so are observing the full intent of the service.
For the subsequent six days of the feast, wine is present at the festival table as a mealtime beverage in the same way that it appears at the ordinary Bravian meal — modestly, in reasonable quantities, as an accompaniment to food rather than as the subject of the drinking. The Bravian character is not given to excess in any form, and the feast week’s wine is no exception: it is present because it is appropriate and good, not because the feast is an occasion for unusual quantities.
Bravian Wine and the Festival Season: Practical Considerations
The Bravian wine tradition is primarily a tradition of grape cultivation in the southern and eastern agricultural regions, the more temperate valleys of the hill country, and — increasingly — the Delta settlements where the combination of river-enriched soil and long growing seasons produces grapes of considerable character. The port towns have access to imported wines through their maritime trade, and the festival table in those communities may draw on a wider range of wine sources than the inland communities that are limited to what is grown within their own province.
The selection of wine for the Passover service and the feast week table is a matter on which I have views but limited authority, because wine selection is properly the domain of those who know the specific wines available in any given region and in any given year, and the baker preparing a festival table should consult the merchants and growers of her region rather than a cookbook for guidance on what to serve. What I can offer is the practical consideration relevant to any wine at the festival table: the wine should be genuinely good, of a quality appropriate to a commanded observance and to a week of celebration, and it should be selected with the same care and attention that the baker brings to the selection of her flour and her oil and her honey.
A note for the household that makes its own wine: the home winemaker preparing for the feast season should ensure that the wine intended for the Passover cups and the feast week table has completed its fermentation fully before it is used, because actively fermenting wine — wine in which the yeast is still visibly at work, producing bubbles and foam at the surface of the vessel — presents a different theological question than fully fermented wine. A wine that is still actively fermenting is a wine in which a biological leavening culture is present and operating. The same reasoning that removes sourdough starter from the kitchen during the feast removes actively fermenting wine from the feast table, and the home winemaker should time her winemaking so that the wines intended for the feast have fully fermented and settled before the feast begins. Wine that has fully fermented, in which the yeast has completed its work and settled out of the liquid, is a product rather than a process, and it is as appropriate at the feast table as the Scripture places it.
Recipe 53 — Fresh-Pressed Grape Juice for the Passover Table
Level: appropriate for all observance levels
A note on this recipe: fresh-pressed grape juice is the traditional alternative to wine at the Passover table for those members of the household who do not or cannot drink wine, and it appears in the Bravian feast tradition as a parallel presence alongside the wine rather than a replacement for it. In the households I know best, the Passover table typically holds both: a carafe of wine for the adults who observe with wine, and a smaller pitcher of fresh or preserved grape juice for the children and for any adult who prefers it. Both are present at each cup, and each member of the household drinks from the preparation appropriate to them.
Fresh-pressed grape juice, when it is available — which in the spring feast season means preserved grape juice from the autumn’s pressing, since fresh grapes are not yet in season — is the correct form for the Passover table. The preparation I describe here addresses the pressing and preservation of grape juice from the autumn harvest in a form that will keep through the winter and spring for use at the feast, as well as the reconstitution of preserved juice for the table.
I am aware that some readers will note the absence of fresh grapes in the spring season and wonder how fresh-pressed grape juice can be a traditional feast preparation. The answer is that in the Bravian tradition, the fresh-pressed juice used at the feast is the preserved juice of the previous autumn: pressed from the harvest grapes in the autumn, heated briefly to prevent fermentation from beginning, and stored in sealed vessels in the cold room through the winter. This is not a compromise of the preparation but the traditional method of its production, and the juice produced by careful autumn pressing and clean preservation is genuinely excellent when served at the Passover table in the spring.
For autumn pressing and preservation:
When the grape harvest arrives — in the Western Reaches, typically in late summer or early autumn — set aside a portion of the freshest, ripest grapes specifically for juice pressing rather than for winemaking. The distinction in the harvest between grapes for wine and grapes for feast-table juice is a deliberate one in the organized Bravian household, and the grapes for juice should be pressed within a day or two of picking to minimize the wild yeast activity on their skins that will begin fermentation if the juice is not heated promptly.
Press the grapes by whatever method your household uses — the large wooden press of the grange facility if you have access to it, the hand press of the home operation, or, for small quantities, the simple method of pressing the grapes through a clean cloth with the hands over a large bowl. The goal is the extraction of the clear juice from the fruit without the crushing of the seeds, which release bitter compounds into the juice that affect its flavor. Press firmly but without violence.
Transfer the pressed juice to a clean heavy-bottomed pot immediately after pressing. Heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the juice is hot throughout and beginning to show the first signs of surface movement — not a full boil, not even a simmer, but the temperature at which a finger held in the juice becomes uncomfortable to keep there, the same temperature I described for milk in Chapter 16. This gentle heating kills the wild yeast on the skins that has entered the juice during pressing and prevents fermentation from beginning, while preserving the flavor compounds of the fresh grape that a full boiling would destroy.
Transfer the heated juice immediately to clean, dry, sealed vessels — stoneware jars with tight-fitting lids, glass bottles sealed with wax, or any vessel that can be closed completely against air. Fill the vessels as completely as possible, leaving minimal air space at the top, because the air that remains above the juice contains wild yeast spores that will eventually produce fermentation even after the juice has been heated. Store in the cold room, where the low temperature and the absence of air will preserve the juice through the winter and spring in good condition.
When the feast season arrives, bring the preserved juice to the table directly from the cold room. A juice that has been correctly preserved and stored will be clear, deeply colored, and fresh in flavor with a concentration of grape character that no commercially produced grape juice — processed at high heat and often diluted — can approach. The cold room’s low temperature may have produced a fine sediment of natural tannins and grape solids at the bottom of the vessel: this sediment is harmless and is the sign of a minimally processed juice rather than a processed one. Pour carefully, leaving the sediment in the vessel, or pour through a fine cloth if a completely clear juice is preferred for the table presentation.
For the household that did not press juice in the autumn: Consult the port-town merchants or the grange cooperative store for preserved grape juice of good quality. The grange cooperatives in most Amphoe communities maintain a small supply of preserved festival juice precisely because not every household has the grape cultivation or the pressing equipment to produce its own, and this supply is generally sold at cost to community members as a service to the feast observance rather than as a commercial product.
Recipe 54 — Spiced Grape Preparation for the Feast Week Table
Level: appropriate for all observance levels
A note on this recipe: the spiced grape preparation is a warm beverage made from grape juice combined with gentle spicing and served heated — not boiled, which would alter the character of the juice, but warmed to a comfortable drinking temperature that makes it appropriate for the cooler evenings of the spring feast season in the interior communities and the hill country, where the spring nights are still cold enough to make a warm beverage genuinely welcome at the table. It is not the Passover service preparation, which is served in its simple, unspiced form as described in Recipe 53; it is the feast-week table beverage for the evenings of the subsequent six days, when the ceremonial requirements of the Passover night have been met and the table can settle into the pleasures of the remaining feast days.
This preparation is made fresh for each serving and requires no advance preparation beyond having good grape juice available, which the household that followed the autumn preservation guidance above will have in abundance.
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients:
- 4 cups preserved grape juice, as prepared in Recipe 53 or of equivalent quality
- 1 stick of cinnamon
- 4 whole cloves
- 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed to open them — not ground, not powdered, but lightly cracked so the seeds within are exposed to the liquid during heating
- 1 strip of dried lemon or orange peel, approximately three inches long, with the pith removed as thoroughly as possible
- 1 tablespoon honey, optional — to moderate the tartness of a particularly dry or astringent grape juice; taste first and add honey only if the juice’s natural character warrants it, because over-sweetened warmed grape juice loses the refreshing quality of the grape flavor and becomes simply sweet
Method:
Combine all ingredients in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Warm over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the preparation is hot enough to hold in the hands comfortably and produces a visible fragrant steam from the spices, but is not boiling or simmering. The correct temperature is the same gentle warmth specified in Recipe 53 and in Chapter 16: hot enough to be a genuinely warm beverage, not so hot as to boil off the aromatic compounds that the spices have released or to alter the fundamental character of the grape juice. Maintain this gentle warmth for ten minutes to allow the spices to fully infuse the juice, then remove from the heat.
Strain through a fine cloth or sieve into a serving vessel, removing the whole spices and peel. Serve immediately in cups, with a small additional stick of cinnamon in each cup if presentation at the table warrants the gesture.
On the selection of spices: The combination of cinnamon, clove, and cardamom is the Western Reaches standard for this preparation, and it is a combination of long standing in the Bravian household tradition that I find consistently balanced and appropriate. Cinnamon’s warmth and sweetness, clove’s depth and slight bitterness, and cardamom’s floral complexity each contribute something distinct, and the combination is more interesting than any of the three alone. The lemon or orange peel provides a brightness that keeps the spiced preparation from becoming heavy.
The baker who wishes to vary the preparation across the seven days of the feast — using it, as I do, as one of the small daily variations that keep the feast week table from becoming repetitive — can do so by varying the spice combination: ginger root added for warmth and bite, star anise for a more complex anise character, dried rosehips for a slight tartness and a deeper color. All of these are appropriate variations, and the specific combination that works best with a particular grape juice depends partly on the character of the juice itself: a very sweet, ripe juice benefits from spicing that adds complexity and a degree of astringency, while a tarter, more acidic juice benefits from spicing that rounds and softens its character.
Herbal Tisanes of the Bravian Household
The herbal tisane — a preparation made by steeping dried or fresh herbs in hot water and drinking the resulting liquid — occupies a specific and important position in the Bravian household beverage tradition that is quite distinct from the ceremonial and table-beverage roles of wine and grape juice. The tisane is the everyday beverage of the Bravian household throughout the year: the morning beverage of the working household before the day’s labor begins, the evening beverage of the contemplative household after the day’s labor ends, the comfort preparation of the sick room, the thinking drink of the scholar and the planning drink of the household manager. It is present throughout the year and throughout the feast season without any question of appropriateness or theological consideration, because it contains no grain, no leavening, no fermentation of any kind, and no ingredient whose relationship to the feast’s commandments presents any complexity whatsoever.
I include the tisane preparations in this chapter because a complete treatment of the beverages of the feast table would be incomplete without them, and because the tisanes specific to the feast season — both those associated with the spring herbs that come into growth during the feast week and those that have traditional associations with the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread specifically — deserve documentation alongside the wine and the grape juice preparations that receive most of the seasonal attention.
The following are the tisanes most commonly associated with the feast season across Bravia’s regional household traditions, organized by region and by the timing of their use within the feast week.
Recipe 55 — Chamomile and Honey: The Morning Tisane of the Feast Week
Level: appropriate for all observance levels
A note on this recipe: chamomile grows readily in the meadows and kitchen gardens of the Western Reaches and flowers in late spring, which means that during the feast season the first chamomile flowers of the year are available — barely, in the cooler years, abundantly in the warmer ones — for the morning tisane that is the traditional opening of each feast-week day in the Western Reaches household tradition. Chamomile dried from the previous summer is equally good if the fresh flowers are not yet available: the flavor difference between fresh and properly dried chamomile is a matter of subtlety rather than substance, and the dried preparation is what most households use for the majority of the feast week.
This tisane is associated with the morning rather than the evening because chamomile’s mild, apple-scented gentleness is the flavor of a quiet morning beginning rather than an evening closing, and because the honey dissolved in the warm tisane provides a small, gentle sweetness that is the appropriate way to begin a day of the feast: not extravagant, not austere, but warmly moderate, which is the register of the Bravian feast morning table generally.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons dried chamomile flowers, or 4 tablespoons fresh flowers if available — the larger quantity for fresh because the flavor compounds are less concentrated in fresh flowers than in dried
- 2 cups water, heated until just below boiling — chamomile tisane should not be made with fully boiling water, which destroys some of the more delicate aromatic compounds of the flower and produces a slightly harsh result; the water should be hot enough to produce vigorous steam but should be removed from the heat before it reaches a full boil
- 1 teaspoon good honey per cup, or to taste
Method:
Place the chamomile flowers in a small, clean teapot or a heatproof vessel with a lid. Pour the hot water over the flowers. Cover and allow to steep for five minutes — not longer, because chamomile steeped beyond five minutes develops a slight bitterness from the breakdown of certain compounds in the flower that the five-minute steep preserves intact. Strain through a fine sieve into cups. Dissolve the honey in each cup, stirring until the honey is fully incorporated. The correct serving temperature is warm enough to be a genuine hot beverage but cool enough to drink without discomfort: a cup of chamomile-honey tisane should be drinkable immediately rather than requiring a period of cooling.
Serve at the morning table alongside the first day’s simple flatbread breakfast — the plain matzah or the oil-enriched round of Chapter 11, with soft cheese and a small dish of honey — as the opening beverage of the feast day. There is something in the combination of chamomile’s gentleness and honey’s warmth and the plain flatbread’s direct grain flavor that constitutes, for me, the essential flavor of a feast-week morning: simple, honest, and genuinely good in a way that does not announce itself but simply is.
Recipe 56 — Peppermint and Wild Herb Tisane: The Digestive of the Feast Week Table
Level: appropriate for all observance levels
A note on this recipe: the peppermint tisane is the post-meal beverage of the feast week table throughout Bravia, served after the main meal in the late afternoon or the evening as the digestive beverage that closes the day’s primary eating. Peppermint grows readily throughout Bravia — it is one of the few herbs that spreads of its own accord through a kitchen garden with the enthusiasm of a plant that has decided to be helpful and needs no encouragement — and it is one of the most universally present herbs in the Bravian household pantry in both fresh and dried form throughout the year.
The addition of wild herbs to the peppermint tisane varies considerably by region and by what the spring landscape of each area provides: in the Western Reaches, wild thyme from the hill country and lemon balm from the coastal meadows are common additions; in the Delta settlements, fresh coriander leaf appears in some preparations; in the interior communities, dried lemon verbena or dried lemon peel serves the brightening function that fresh citrus herbs provide in the regions where they grow. The framework below accommodates this regional variation while maintaining the peppermint as the primary character of the preparation.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 3 tablespoons dried peppermint, or 6 tablespoons fresh peppermint leaves, torn roughly — the tearing releases the mint oils without the bruising that chopping produces, which generates a slightly harsh character
- 1 tablespoon secondary herb of your region’s choice: dried lemon balm, fresh coriander leaf, dried lemon verbena, dried lemon peel, or fresh thyme in small quantity
- 4 cups water, heated to just below boiling
- Honey to taste, optional — I drink this without honey and prefer it that way, because the peppermint’s own natural sweetness and the slight sharpness of the secondary herb are a combination that honey moderates in a direction I do not want; others disagree and add honey readily
Method:
Combine the peppermint and the secondary herb in a covered vessel. Pour the hot water over the herbs, cover, and steep for four to six minutes — longer than the chamomile, because peppermint’s robust essential oils require more time to fully infuse the water and because peppermint, unlike chamomile, does not become objectionably bitter with slightly longer steeping. Strain into cups or a serving vessel. Add honey if desired.
Serve warm or, for the summer evenings of the feast season in the southern communities where the feast week falls in warm weather, slightly cooled or at room temperature. A peppermint tisane that has been allowed to cool is a pleasant beverage in warm conditions and is quite different from the warm version in its character: the coolness moderates the peppermint’s sharpness and makes the secondary herb’s contribution more prominent.
On the digestive function of peppermint at the feast table: The peppermint tisane’s role as a digestive after the feast meal is not merely conventional but practical. The feast week meals, particularly around the Passover table with its lamb stew and its rich oil-enriched preparations and its dairy accompaniments, are generous and substantial meals whose digestion is genuinely aided by the mild carminative properties of peppermint. The Bravian tradition of the post-meal peppermint tisane is as much a practical health practice as a culinary one, and it is a practice that the feast meal, with its particular combination of rich preparations, especially rewards.
Recipe 57 — The Long Tisane: A Contemplative Preparation for the Feast Season
Level: appropriate for all observance levels
A note on this recipe: the long tisane is not the tisane of the busy morning or the post-meal digestive but the tisane of the contemplative evening, associated in the Bravian religious tradition with the private reflection and the household study that are considered appropriate activities during the feast week. It is brewed differently from the quick tisanes of Recipes 55 and 56 — steeped for a longer period at a lower temperature, in the manner of a traditional herbal decoction rather than a quick infusion — and the result is a preparation of deeper color and more complex flavor that rewards slow drinking and extended attention rather than the quick cup of the working morning.
The specific herbs in the long tisane vary more widely across Bravia’s regional traditions than any other preparation in this chapter, because the choice of herbs for an evening contemplative beverage is a deeply personal and deeply regional matter, shaped by what is available, what is traditional in the household, and what specific qualities the drinker is seeking. I offer the following as the preparation I make for myself during the feast week evenings when the bakery is closed and the festival table has been cleared and the household settles into the quieter hours: it is my own long tisane, drawn from the ingredients available in the Porterville kitchen garden and the hill country herb sources that I have used for many years, and the reader should understand it as a specific, personal formulation rather than a prescriptive standard.
The long tisane is the preparation I associate most directly with the private, quiet dimension of the feast season — the dimension that the Passover table and the grange gathering and the community observances address collectively, but that is also observed individually in each household as a matter of personal reflection and personal renewal. The feast week, in the Bravian understanding, is not only a communal observance but a personal one, and the long tisane of the evening hour is, for me, the beverage of that personal dimension.
Serves 1 to 2 for an extended evening
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon dried linden flower — linden grows in the older residential areas of Porterville and along the edges of certain of the meadows north of the town, and its flowers dried in late summer produce a tisane of remarkable gentleness and sweetness that I consider the base note of this preparation
- 1 teaspoon dried elderflower, if available — elderflower is not universally available throughout Bravia but appears in the hill country communities and in some of the older Amphoe plantings; it adds a complex floral character to the preparation that is distinctive and very pleasant
- 1 teaspoon dried rosehip — the fruit of the wild rose, dried from the autumn harvest; rosehips contribute a mild tartness and a warmth of color to the preparation, deepening its character without asserting themselves at the expense of the gentler flowers
- ½ teaspoon dried lemon balm — for brightness and a very mild citrus-adjacent note that keeps the preparation from becoming too sweet
- 1 teaspoon honey, added to the finished preparation
- 2 cups water, heated until just below boiling
Method:
Combine all dried herbs in a covered vessel. Pour the hot water over the herbs and cover. Allow to steep for ten minutes — considerably longer than the quick tisane preparations, because this longer steep at the slightly lower temperature of just-below-boiling water extracts the deeper, more complex compounds of the herbs without the harshness that fully boiling water and long steeping would produce in the chamomile. After ten minutes, strain slowly through a fine cloth into a cup or a small vessel that can be kept warm during the drinking.
Add the honey while the preparation is still very warm and stir until dissolved. The honey’s contribution to this preparation is more significant than in the chamomile tisane: the linden and elderflower’s natural sweetness is gentle enough that the honey rounds and completes it rather than merely adding to an already-present sweetness, and the specific honey used matters somewhat. I use a lighter wildflower honey rather than the robust dark honey of the hill country, because the preparation’s character is gentle and should not be overwhelmed by a strongly assertive honey.
Drink slowly, in a warm room, in the evening. This is not a beverage of ceremony or obligation but a preparation of personal pleasure and personal reflection, and it is drunk in whatever manner and with whatever thoughts are appropriate to the hour and the person drinking it.
A Note on Water
I want to close the recipe section of this chapter with a word about the preparation that underlies every tisane and every hot beverage in this chapter and that deserves more acknowledgment than it typically receives in a book about baking and cooking: water.
The water available in different regions of Bravia varies considerably in character, as I noted in Chapter 4 in the context of Level 3 flatbread preparation. Hard water, with its mineral content, produces slightly different results in baking and noticeably different results in tisane preparation: a hard water tisane will be slightly more astringent in character than the same preparation made with softer water, and the mineral content of the water will be perceptible as a faint metallic or chalky background note in delicate preparations like the chamomile tisane where nothing else competes with it.
In the limestone regions of the Western Reaches hill country — Porterville sits at the edge of this zone — this hard water character is simply a fact of the kitchen and of the table, and the households that have grown up drinking it have calibrated their preparations accordingly. The chamomile tisane of the hill country household tastes slightly different from the same preparation made in a port-town kitchen where the water is softer, and this is not a defect but a regional characteristic in the same way that the lamb fat flatbread of the hill country is a regional characteristic: it is what it is, and it is part of the flavor of the place.
Good water, clean and appropriate to the preparations made from it, is the invisible ingredient of everything in this book — the base of every dough, the medium of every tisane, the liquid of every braising pot. The feast week’s drinks are only as good as the water they are made from, and the baker who pays attention to her flour and her fat and her oil and her honey should pay equal attention to her water, which is the simplest and the most fundamental ingredient of the festival kitchen and which, when it is genuinely good, contributes a quality to the table that no other ingredient can provide or replace.
The Feast Week Table Complete
We have now, between this chapter and the fourteen that preceded it in the recipe sections of this book, addressed the full range of what the Bravian feast week table can offer: the bread in its three levels and its many regional forms; the savory accompaniments in their soups and stews and spreads; the dairy preparations from fresh curd to long-cultured pressed cheese; the eggs in their ceremonial and everyday forms; and the beverages from the commanded cups of the Passover service to the contemplative long tisane of the feast-week evening. The table that can be built from these preparations is a table of genuine abundance and genuine variety — not the abundance of excess, which is not the Bravian way, but the abundance of careful attention paid to a wide range of good things over the course of seven full days.
I want to say something about the seven days before I close, because the number is not incidental to the experience of the feast and not incidental to the use of this book.
Seven days is a long time to observe a single feast. It is long enough that the first day’s preparations — the Passover table with its ceremonial weight and its particular combination of flatbread and bitter herbs and lamb and wine — recede into a different character by the seventh day’s quieter, more familiar eating. It is long enough that the baker has time to bake many batches of many preparations and to develop, across the week, a relationship with the unleavened kitchen that a single observance day would not permit. It is long enough that the household settles into the feast rather than merely observing it and then returning to ordinary life: the feast week becomes its own kind of ordinary life, temporarily, and in this temporary ordinariness there is something that a single ceremonial day cannot achieve.
The bread of affliction, eaten every day for seven days, stops being a symbol at some point and becomes simply what one eats — which is, I think, exactly the intention. The removing of leaven from the house for a week is not a reminder of the Exodus in the way that a photograph reminds us of a moment. It is a participation: a week of actually living in a different relationship to the basic material of daily bread, which is a participation in the memory of our fathers who lived in a different relationship to bread for all the years of their affliction and on the night of their departure and in the years of the wilderness that followed.
Seven days is the right length for this participation. Not so short that it remains entirely symbolic, not so long that it becomes a burden the commandment never intended. Seven days of genuinely eating unleavened bread, genuinely drinking the wine of the table and the tisanes of the evening, genuinely bringing the full attention of the household kitchen to the preparation of good food within the constraints the season sets — seven days of that constitutes an experience that changes the baker’s relationship to her materials in a way that lasts beyond the week itself and enriches every subsequent year’s observation.
I have been observing this feast for more than fifty years. The first days of the feast still taste different from the last days, and the last days of the feast still taste different from the first day after the feast, when the sourdough starter comes back out of the cold cellar and the first leavened preparation of the new year comes off the griddle. I eat that first piece of leavened bread every year with a genuine pleasure at its return — a pleasure that would not be as sharp or as genuine if the seven days had not been fully and carefully kept.
The feast gives back what it takes, and it gives it back with interest. This is the pattern of the covenant that the feast commemorates, and the baker who keeps the feast fully, across all seven days and at whatever level of observance her household holds, will understand this in her hands and in her kitchen and at her table, in the specific and irreplaceable way that only the doing of a thing teaches.
That is what this book has been trying to serve, from the first words of the foreword to these last words of the final chapter.
May your kitchen be well-supplied, your griddle well-heated, and your feast fully kept.
Vreni Hochstrasser Porterville, Western Reaches The Stone Hearth Bakery Year 3015
The Back Matter — Quick Reference Chart, Substitution Guide, Glossary of Bravian Baking Terms, and Acknowledgments — begins on the following page.
