Me and the challah, a love story.

I'm really enjoying baking challah every week.  It gives me a greater connection to my Judaism and the Jewish world. As someone living not only in the diaspora, but also feeling like I live in hamidbar, I have little connection to the Jewish world.  No shul to attend every week unless I schlep to Vancouver.  No one to sit by for Shabbat (other than DH and DD).  It makes a girl feel pretty alone.

But baking challah has eased that a bit.  I feel the generations running through me as I measure, stir, and knead.  Every time I braid a challah I think of women doing this in modern day shtetls in places like New Square or Monsey, or Mea Shearim. I don't feel separate from them but I feel a part of them.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not totally happy.  I do miss having that daily connection to Jewish life right outside my front door.  But for now, baking challah is as close as I can get and it feels good.  Shabbat Shalom.

The Politics of Hair Covering

I cover my hair about 75% of the time that I leave the house as it is a requirement of married Jewish women. I don't cover it at home because when I am at home, I rarely have any visitors and I am trying to minimize damage. Yes, covering your hair constantly does damage it.  And frankly, I am just too vain to watch my hair break and fall out.

As for what I cover with, my preference is tichels.,  Beautiful scarves.  Love them.  In North America, tichels are hardly seen but sheitels (wigs) are the norm.  I have an idea why and it irks me. It's come to it being an almost political statement.  If you wear a tichel, people assume you are Israeli.  If you respond you are not, they assume you are Sephardic or have a Sephardic husband.  If you also deny that, they look at you like you are not only a freak but also very wrong.  See, most of the North American Jewish population is Ashkenazic. and the hair covering of choice is the sheitel.

The sheitel does have it's benefits, to be sure.  The biggest is that you can finally have hair that looks fabulous all the time. Some of the more picky rabbis have realized this and so they require women wear a cover of the sheitel.  Yes, a cover over a cover.  No, they can't just wear a hat or tichel.  They have to wear a sheitel, with a hat or tichel over it.  Why? Because they said so.  And it's political.  So if you don't, your community will probably come to regard you as rather goyish. That's because those rabbis prefer sheitels because they cover every strand of hair.

But sheitels are hot, itchy, and do a lot of damage if worn all the time.  And why can't Jewish women not want to destroy their hair and not want to be uncomfortable?  Why can't the tichel or the hat be embraced?  Sure you occasionally see some hair peeking out of a tichel in Israel.  But these women are somehow less observant than their North American counterparts who sit comfortably every night not worrying about if their husband or child or themselves will be blown to bits by terrorists?

Challah baking

I love to cook and bake.  I've always been a baking failure though. My breads come out like rocks. Or dried out. Last week I played around with some French bread, artisan style.  It came out pretty but not so much in the taste department.  I've successfully made challah for Shabbat, but it was many years ago.  I decided to start again but was afraid of massive failure.  I took from a few recipes I found at imamother.com and put them together for this:

NOTE: Do not change  the order of mixing this recipe or it may not be fail safe anymore!
Mix together:

1.5 Tbsp. dry active yeast (that's 2 packets)
1/2 cup warm water
A pinch of sugar


*After mixing yeast with the warm water and the pinch of sugar, wait for yeast to foam and bubble.  This tells you that your yeast is indeed active. Make sure water is just slightly above lukewarm.  Too cold water will cause yeast not to activate. Too hot water will kill the yeast.

Add and mix together with dissolved yeast:

1-1/2 cup warm water (this makes 2 cups total of warm water, including the 1/2 water used in the yeast)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
3.5 cups flour

Add to mixture and mix together:

2 eggs beaten
1/2 cup oil

Add to mixture and mix together:

3-1/2 to 4 cups flour
Remove from bowl and knead into a good dough. Lightly sprinkle with flour while kneading. Continue kneading until no longer sticky but not dry. About 10 mins.

Place in a lightly oiled bowl.  Turn the dough to get the dough oiled as well. Cover with clean towel (a tea towel or something not terry cloth.  Or just use plastic wrap) and let rise for 1 to 2 hour.  Punch dough down at least three times during the rise. Letting it rise for 2 hours makes for a fluffier challah.

After rising, take the piece of dough that you will be separating and either burn it on your gas stove flame or wrap it in foil and burn it up in your oven. This recipe is not large enough to make the bracha, so you just separate. If you double the recipe and a bit more flour you have enough to make the bracha.

Shape dough into braided loaves (I use 6 strands).

Let the braided loaves rise on parchment lined cookie sheets for about an hour to 1.5 hours.

Brush with egg wash

If you like add toppings:
1) a mixture of salt and garlic powder
2) a mixture of sugar and cinnamon
3) or add either poppy seeds or sesame seeds

 After final rise, place challah in cold oven.  Turn on heat to 350 degrees and bake for 30-45 minutes or until gold brown.  A cold oven allows the challah to continue rising as it warms up to baking temp.
This recipe can be doubled.

And....

Here is right before it went into the oven:

And this is when it came out:

It was fluffy, light, not dried out, and just incredible!

Success!


Impressed with myself, I am going to try a standard white sandwich loaf tomorrow.  Hopefully I will become the bread making success I long to be.