Bible-centered churches, especially those with a leavening therapeutic touch, such as Saddleback and Willow Creek in suburban Chicago, are the country's fastest growing.

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Yet the fierceness of the storytelling exerts an unbroken grip, and there is leavening, of a sort, from Michael Caine, who plays a joint-puffing hippie in the woods the last happy man in the world.

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Whichever scenario unfolds, one would think that the new appraisal of developments in the Soviet Union would be leavening the yeasty enthusiasm in the West for cementing deals with the current ruler of the Kremlin.

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Whatever the outcome, one would think that the new appraisal of developments in the Soviet Union would be leavening the yeasty enthusiasm in the West for doing arms control deals with the current ruler of the Kremlin.

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"I think he has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses, " Jackson was quoted as saying this month in The New Yorker magazine.

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While Giotto developed a sense of volume in his painting, Duccio stuck to the two-dimensional painting of Cimabue and surpassed it, leavening the Byzantine forms with brilliant hues and a tenderness between Madonna and Child (pictured) that could touch his viewers.

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Thus armed, tackling the recipe itself an elemental combination of confectioner's sugar, flour, eggs and anise oil is easy. (You may have most of the ingredients on hand already.) For leavening, purists prefer a pinch of hartshorn (aka baker's ammonia), which is traditional in Scandinavian baking and thought to produce a tender, fluffier crumb but conventional baking powder more than suffices.

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