Two elderly women from the parish of Livramento, in São Miguel, Azores, are keeping alive the making of dough dolls, an Easter tradition that has crossed generations but is in danger of disappearing.
Lúcia Pereira, 71, and Estrela Pereira, 72, are users of the Livramento Integrated Support Center for the Elderly and every year they are challenged by the institution to make the pasta dolls given to them by their godparents and grandparents at Easter.
“I learned from my mother. She used to make the dolls and we used to walk around with them,” Lúcia Pereira told Lusa.
In the kitchen of the Livramento Support Center for the Elderly, Lúcia Pereira takes the lead in the activity, surrounded by bowls of pre-prepared dough.
The oven is no longer wood-fired, as it was in his childhood. But the ingredients don’t change. And the secret is in the dough.
“Two kilos of flour, a dozen eggs, half a kilo of sugar, a glass of oil, lemon zest, butter and yeast,” describes Lúcia Pereira to Lusa, arranging several sheets of yam (tuber) side by side where the dolls will be molded and placed in the electric oven.
Lúcia Pereira would like the younger generation to take an interest in this tradition.
“Now in the bakery it’s all machines. Nobody wants to make these dolls. They don’t have the patience,” she says.
And even though her grandchildren are now grown up, Lúcia Pereira makes a point of giving them the pasta dolls for Easter.
“If you have a boy, you get a boy and if you have girls, you get a girl,” she explains, brushing a doll ready to be put in the oven with egg.
On the same side, Estrela prepares to decorate the dolls after baking the dough.
“In the past, we used to put pieces of fabric to decorate a skirt or blouse. The egg is used to make the face. And we draw the eyes. But some people also add buttons,” says Estrela Pereira.
The user of the Support Center for the Elderly says that in her youth “there were few resources” and these pasta dolls were also a form of entertainment.
The daughter of a peasant father and a domestic mother, Estrela Pereira was waiting for Easter Sunday to receive a doll.
“I’d wrap the doll in a white napkin, like a blanket, and then I’d go and play with the neighbors in the street,” she recalls.
Estrela Pereira recognizes that young people in the parish are no longer interested in this tradition.
“Not many people do it here in Livramento. Hardly anyone wants to learn anymore. They just want everything bought. Or they want to play on their cell phones,” he laments.
Like Lúcia and Estrela, Isabel Moniz, 64, an employee at the Center, remembers with nostalgia the dolls made by her mother.
“My mother always made two doughs. One for the cakes and the other was reserved for the dolls. It had to be a harder dough,” explains Isabel Moniz, thrilled.
The employee, who is now a grandmother, guarantees that the pasta for the dolls “was different” and even “special”, because “it had an unparalleled flavor”.
“This pasta has always stayed in my memory,” he says.
From her mother she also inherited a love of baking Easter cakes.
“I think it’s very good for the center to recreate this habit, because tradition eventually dies out,” he adds.
Denise Cassis is the animator and head of the Livramento Support Center for the Elderly.
Denise Cassis explained to Lusa that she was unaware of the tradition of kneaded dough dolls until she started working at the Center.
“When I came to work here [Centro de Apoio ao Idoso], they told me about the dolls. I thought it was interesting and immediately thought: let’s not let the tradition die. Mrs. Lúcia taught us how to make the dolls and it’s already a tradition,” she says.
According to Denise Cassis, the institution’s aim “is to keep the tradition alive as long as possible”.
“We’re at the center during the day. We have activities planned and this one [making dough dolls] is always one of the first I schedule at Easter,” she told Lusa.
