Celebrating St. Joseph’s Day — the Italian Way

A screwdriver, 18 eggs, and an overzealous oven. My culinary preparations for the feast of Saint Joseph were off to quite the start last Monday.

March 19 marked the first yearly feast of Jesus’s foster father, Joseph. For years, I thought it was slightly unfair that so wonderful a saint had only two feast days (the other is May 1), but perhaps this humble man is perfectly happy with the arrangement. He certainly makes good use of the day, as the March 19 festivities are some of my favorites. Catholics are rarely averse to a good party, and in the Schutte home, you can’t have a party without bread.

My mom’s Italian heritage shines through on these occasions, particularly in the bread-making department. There seems to be a special Italian recipe for every feast imaginable, and Mom has perfected her treats over the years. With so many feast days from which to choose, our family focuses on four (sometimes five) throughout the year, which are treated with more pomp and circumstance. They are Saint Thérèse (October 1), Saint Nicholas (December 6), Saint Lucy (December 13), and Saint Joseph (March 19). If Mom has the energy, we’ll also celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12). Most of these feasts have a bread associated with them, or we’ve made one up over time, and Saint Joseph’s Day is no exception. Mom has made this version for quite a while, and I was excited to attempt it myself this year.

You see, Saint Joseph’s Day involves not just a loaf of bread, but a whole tableful of loaves in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—many of them extremely ornate. It is a table packed with desserts and pastries, and maybe some pasta on the side. It overflows with lilies, greenery, and candles, all scattered around a white tablecloth, and in the middle, atop a three-tiered structure, sits a statue or image of the good saint himself. This is the old Italian Saint Joseph’s Table tradition, and the “staff bread,” as we call it, was just the beginning of the plans for my very own celebration.

The baking list was as follows:

• Joseph’s Bread (“staff bread”)
• Pizzelles (regular, chocolate, and mixed)
• Decorated Focaccia
• Chocolate Focaccia
• Zeppole di San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph’s pastries)

Only two of the five recipes were new to me, but with the party being on Tuesday night and my wanting the treats to all be fresh, the earliest I could start baking was Monday morning. I had a few obligations that day that didn’t play well with my dough-rising schedule. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, though, so I finished up the Morning Jolt edits and headed to the kitchen to start the chocolate focaccia. This one worried me, simply because chocolate tends to dry out bread, but I had faith in the geniuses at King Arthur Baking. The initial dough looked like a yeasted brownie — very gloppy and lumpy — but the end result was the hit of the party, and my dad is now demanding it for Easter.

The zeppole filling was next . . . until I got to the fridge and realized I’d left milk off the shopping list. Plowing ahead, I tabbed that task for later and started my pizzelle assembly line. For Christmas, I received a long-desired pizzelle-maker from my uncle, and I’ve kept it quite busy in the months since. It does not, as I sadly learned, have a timer built in to tell you when the pizzelle is done. A few burned cookies later, I had my counting game down to a science: Twenty-seven seconds, open the lid, slide the cookie out on a fork, and flip it deftly onto the waiting cooling rack. The traditional anise-flavored version is my favorite, but I figured why make 40 pizzelles when you could make 80? So I did a second batch in chocolate (and mixed the two flavors a few times as well).

After finishing up my evening obligations, I started on the zeppole, blissfully unaware of disaster lurking around the corner. First though, I nailed the filling. As I’ve noted before, I’ve had varying levels of success when making pudding from scratch, but Monday’s attempt went swimmingly. The vessel for said filling is a simple choux pastry — butter, flour, eggs, and salt. Cream puffs, which employ said choux pastry, are a specialty of mine, and the dough came together easily. My first error, though? Incorrectly piping the dough onto the baking sheets. Yes, I piped each like a donut, complete with a hole in the middle, with nowhere for the filling to go. The second error came as I was washing dishes and caught the dishcloth inside the piping tip. Don’t ask me how. After much bending, prodding (with the aforementioned screwdriver), snipping, and tugging . . . part of the dishcloth was still firmly wedged in the tip.

I threw the offending tip in a drawer, pulled the faulty pastries from the oven, and went to bed.

Tuesday morning was more promising, and after a quick store run (I needed more eggs to remake the zeppole), I got my staff dough mixed and on its first rise before starting my morning shift. For reasons unknown even to myself, I’d decided to make the staff using a challah recipe. America’s Test Kitchen’s challah recipe is the perfect blend of crunchy mahogany crust and pillowy interior, so it was worth a shot. After shaping the dough but before its second proof, you have to slash it to get the desired staff shape. Next time, I’ll be more vigorous with this step, but the overall result was convincing.

Take two of the zeppole was much more successful. (And for those wondering, I had a second piping tip, though it was inferior to the mangled one.) I tweaked the filling a bit by adding whipped cream, which made it runnier, but no one minded and it made for entertaining eating. After that, I made a few loaves of decorated focaccia, scrubbed the bathroom, vacuumed everything, and hastily mopped the kitchen.

Using the kitchen island, I created my tiers, laid out my linen tablecloth, and began arranging platters of bread and desserts, interspersed with calla lilies in vases and a squat green pitcher full of bright-eyed daisies. Then I added the framed picture of Saint Joseph, lit some candles, and made one last trip to the bathroom to ensure its cleanliness.

It was a lovely evening full of prayer, song, delightful conversation, red wine, and, of course, lots and lots of bread. Afterward, most guests went home with bags of leftovers. As the Saint Joseph’s Table tradition says, the bounty at the table is to be shared with the poor, and my thoughtful guests knew exactly who needed it the most.

Thank you, dear Saint Joseph, for your example, and for reminding us on this beautiful feast day of what is truly important.

Unfortunately, it’s now Holy Week, and I still have zeppole filling in my fridge . . .