We make three-strand bread braids to decorate our Easter Pascha bread (Russian/slavic tradition). For all these years (decades!) we have formed the ropes by rolling the bread between our hands (with the rope hanging in the air). When I saw this blog post, I shared it with my sister and cousin, and we followed your instructions to roll the dough to shape the ropes. Wow, what a difference. So much easier and the resulting ropes are more consistent for all the bakers (before it was only my sister Susan whose rope shapes were consistent). For the first time, it wasn't obvious which braids Susan made and which ones the others of us made. We have always had one "good" pascha bread that we put on the Easter table, and two also-rans. This year all three of them look good. We had a hard time deciding which one to mark for Easter Sunday before freezing. We chose the largest rather than the best-looking because now they all look good. Thank you!!! How wonderful! I'm so glad that the rolling helped. I didn't start any kind of sibling war, though, right? :) ~ MaryJane

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