Whole Wheat Challah

It's Friday. It's been quite a week. Did I mention we found an apartment in Toronto? Did I forget to tell you that? Well, we did! We'll be moving at the beginning of July. More details (and excitement) to come!

Today I offer you my favourite challah recipe. I try to bake challah a couple of Fridays each month for Shabbat. It's so easy to do (really) and enjoying fresh bread from your own kitchen is a delight I hope you'll share with me. Try it once, just to see.

Deb's recipe makes challah of the exact perfect consistency and I didn't really want to mess with it, but I did anyway, just a bit. I desperately wanted a whole wheat challah that didn't handle or taste like a brick.  I found that substituting half (or almost half) of the all-purpose with whole wheat in this recipe worked perfectly. Almost too perfectly, really. Usually there are so many other adjustments when it comes to cooking with whole wheat, but not here. I'm not asking any questions. Don't mess with what works, right? I also added honey instead of sugar because I just love honey that much.

Do I have any bread making tips? Not really. I love using my stand mixer for the kneading, and I suggest you do the same if you have one. Some bread making purists might disagree, and I'd even understand if they did. Kneading bread by hand is one of my favourite things do, except that I'm five foot two and I'm too short to knead on most surfaces. You need to get above your dough when you're kneading and I can't find a good place here at mum's to do that. Instead I turn to my mixer, which is almost as delightful. One note, though, and Deb warns of this, too: the full recipe as listed below is a bit too much for a standard size mixer. Since I often only make half of the recipe, it isn't a problem.

You'll thank me when your house smells of baking bread. Also, and I just have to say this, you don't need to be a Jew celebrating Shabbat or a holiday to make challah. It's traditional in Judaism to use challah for special blessings, but basically it's just delicious bread. I think it's the reason my non-Jewish family embraced my conversion. Now, please, go make this!


Whole Wheat Challah
Adapted only slightly from Smitten Kitchen

Makes two loaves

1 1/2 packages dry yeast (or 1 1/2 tbsp)
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup oil (olive or canola)
1/2 cup honey
5 large eggs
1tbsp table salt
4 cups whole wheat flour
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
sesame or poppy seeds (if, that is, you won't be sharing this with Alyce)

Dissolve yeast and sugar in 1 3/4 cup warm water (I do this right in the bowl of my mixer).

Whisk oil into yeast mixture, then beat in  4 eggs, one at a time. Add honey and mix again.

Gradually add the flour, about 1 cup at at time, kneading in your mixer for about ten minutes, or until the dough isn't too sticky, feels nice and soft, and stretches without breaking.

On a floured counter, knead by hand for a few minutes, just for good measure. Place dough in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for an hour. (You can also, as Deb suggests, let it rise inside an oven that has warmed up to 150 degrees and been turned off. I like doing this.)

After an hour, marvel at how much your dough has grown.

Punch the dough down in the centre and marvel at how much your dough has deflated. Cover it back up and let it rise for another 30 minutes.

Braid your challah however you like. I'll let you read how Deb explains braiding or you can watch someone else show you here. You'll be taking your dough, splitting in half, and then making either three or six long strands out of each half. From these strands you'll braid together a beautiful challah no matter what other people say. Oddly braided challah is delicious no matter what. Maybe even more so.

Beat 1 egg and brush it over your braided challah (don't throw out the rest You'll be brushing your loaves again soon). If you want to freeze them, as Deb suggests, you can do it now. Wrap up your loaves tightly with plastic wrap and slip them in a freezer bag. If you're not freezing them, you can cover them again and let them rise another hour.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Once they are all done rising, brush again with the egg wash and sprinkle seeds on if you like them. Bake for 30-40 minutes, but I suggest you start checking around 25 minutes. Over-baked challah doesn't do anyone any favours. You'll know it's done with the incredible smell in your house, and by tapping the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds hollow, you're done. Really, take the time to tap the bottom (just put an oven mitt on so you don't burn yourself!), you won't regret having perfectly baked challah.

Cool loaves on a rack.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone!

We bake

 We settled in at (on) the counter to make challah today. Shira was napping, so we got to baking.

We (Alyce) tasted the honey, because, I have no reason. It's just what one does. 

She put her entire self into the project.

She told me stories of princesses.

And best of all, she had the good sense to give me a break and do some dishes already.

Our house smells of warm challah, and I don't know if there is a better smell in the whole world (the cookies we also made this afternoon were a close second). More cookies, you ask? Yes, I need help. I. Can't. Not. Bake. But if you think that over-baking is really so terrible, than I don't think we should be friends. And you might want to stay friends, because then you can eat the cookies. 

Moving on. I'm excited for a relaxing Shabbat dinner tonight with Matt (the girls are heading to bed early tonight after they both woke up on the wrong side of early this morning). Tomorrow me and The Children have been invited to a tea party at a friend's house, and Sunday the three of us head to Toronto for a visit with other friends, where we will enjoy, among other good things, some Indian food. Matt is taking most of the weekend off because he deserves it. We like and and want him to stay happy.

What are your plans for the weekend? I hope it's a great one.

Hanukkah, around our house

We've had five wonderful nights of Hanukkah, although a little too eventful if you ask me. Things started off swimmingly, with school presentations, candles, a Cinderella doll, lego. The usual good stuff. This was the first year that Alyce understood the story of Hanukkah and has more than once gone on about that mean king who didn't Jews read their special books. There have been crafts done at school and at home, now hanging all over the house. But as soon as Hanukkah really got rolling, things got a bit messy around here. Alyce was sent home from school on Wednesday morning having complained of sore ears, and it wasn't long before she was on fire with a ridiculous fever. She'd been sick for a week or so, but since The Children are sick with colds about 98 percent of winter, we hadn't paid much attention. But this fever told us to snap out of our germ complacency and we found ourselves begging the doctor to see us, which she did on Wednesday night. Just as Alyce's antibiotics were kicking in, Shira started to look as though she were possessed by a cranky zombie, which led Matt to spending Friday morning at the emergency room (all the doctor's offices were closed for the holidays). Shira, too, is now slowly on the mend and less zombie-like. Let's hope the next few nights aren't quite so eventful.

For those of you lighting your candles each night, happy fifth night of Hanukkah! Do you have any parties left to attend? Have you made your latkes? And for those of you waiting around for Santa, I hope your Christmas day finds you with good family, good food, and a much needed day off from the rest of the world. Merry Christmas to you!

It's beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah

 

Of course everyone knows it’s the holidays, but in our house this means Hanukkah, not Christmas. Actually, because we’re living with my mum and stepfather, it means Hanukkah and Christmas. Not a combined celebration (in the way many interfaith families celebrate), but side-by-side celebrations that are sometimes a bit confusing for everyone involved. Especially this year, when Hanukkah and Christmas overlap on the calendar, we’re are in full-blown double-holiday season. There are presents wrapped in silver and blue and red and green. There are menorah and dreidel crafts and Christmas Trees. My Jewish family is giving Christmas parents to my family, and my Christmas-celebrating family is offering Hanukkah presents to The Children. But like I said, our family doesn’t celebrate Christmas; we celebrate Hanukkah. I’m so confused some days.

Let me start at the beginning. I wasn’t born Jewish, but converted shortly before I married Matt. I didn’t grow up in a home that identified with a particular religion so I didn’t quite leave a tradition when I spent a year learning Hebrew, learning how to make challah, or when I promised that panel of three rabbis that I would raise my children in a Jewish home. I had developed a closeness to Jewish traditions before even meeting Matt, when I was working for a Jewish professor during my master’s program, spending a lot of time with his family on Shabbat and holidays. A couple of years later, around the time that I knew I would marry Matt I realized, too, that I would become Jewish. It wasn’t a simple decision, but an easy one. My immediate family was completely behind my decision (while the rest of my family oscillates between indifference, curiosity, and slightly offensive comments). But no matter how much I adopted these traditions as my own--welcoming Shabbat on Friday nights, following a new calendar of holidays, committing to a lifelong cycle of learning--it wasn’t always easy to separate myself from my non-Jewish family. Of course no one asked me to put up a wall between my Jewish and non-Jewish life, but becoming Jewish meant not being and not doing other things. While we didn’t observe all of the laws as Orthodox Jews, we still kept kosher and marked Shabbat as a day more special than the others, and this meant that we often couldn’t share the food my family prepared and said no to going shopping on Saturdays.  No matter how much I maintained a bridge between the two worlds, roadblocks still happened sometimes, and that’s just the way it was going to be.

Let me start even more at the beginning. Matt wasn’t born Jewish, either. I won’t share with you his reasons for converting, but I can tell you that he converted on his own (not in preparation for marriage, which is the most common reason for converting) four years before we started dating. It’s not very common to meet two married Jews with no Jewish family, but here we are. In practical terms this means that we make our own party, so to speak. We have no family traditions on which to build, no challah recipe to pass down, and no mother-in-law to remind me that I’m supposed to make brisket this way. It also means that when holidays come around (which they do a lot, because Jews know how to mark historical events like nobodies business), we find ourself in this strange new world of wanting to share our celebrations with a family that doesn’t share our traditions.  There are many wonderful things about our unusual little family, including the freedom to create our own traditions and habits, and the pure amazement both Matt and I feel as we watch Alyce recite a prayer in Hebrew or play Shabbat with her dollies. But December presents some challenges for everyone around here.

It’s a little easier for Matt because he doesn’t have many opportunities to interact with his non-Jewish family. Maybe it’s because he converted long before me, or maybe it’s just because he’s always been an independent sort (that’s the polite way to describe his anti-social tendencies), but whatever the reason Matt finds it easier to draw a firm line between Christmas and Hanukkah. And we do draw a firm line in our own home, where the only mention of Christmas comes in the form of Dora’s holiday special. But even when we’re not living in my mum’s Christmas house, we still have to negotiate how the two holidays will mingle because we do see a lot of my family (hi, mum) and a lot of our friends aren’t Jewish. How do we share in gift-giving? Are they Hanukkah or Christmas gifts? Are we participating in someone else’s holiday or just in the same room for moral support and a good meal? And while Alyce has no problem telling strangers on the street that her family celebrates Hanukkah, and they say isn't she just the sweetest thing, I’m terrified that she’s going to march up to a bunch of children and tell them that Santa isn’t real. I’m really afraid of that. I don’t want my child to be the one who spoils Christmas for her entire kindergarten class.

Most of these details are just that, and ultimately there isn’t much to worry about. But some days Matt and I struggle trying to define our own traditions in the middle of all these competing forces. Sometimes I wish people didn’t assume that everyone celebrates Christmas or that my children are somehow missing out on the greatest.day.ever (M. Bloom wrote about this earlier in the week and it got me thinking), like when my sweet uncle begged me to let Alyce and Shira believe in Santa. To him it has nothing to do with being Jewish or Christian, but only with magic. I get that, I really do. But Alyce and Shira have a lot of magic in their life and they are not made any worse for not having Christmas. They receive plenty of surprises on the eight nights of Hanukkah and love lighting the candles each night. And they have the magic of lighting the candles each Friday night throughout the entire year, so there’s that, too.

But from all of this confusion comes good things, new traditions. Tomorrow morning, for instance, Matt will be teaching Alyce’s entire kindergarten class (and some older students, too) about our Hanukkah traditions. Alyce’s school is pretty old-fashioned when it comes to marking holidays, and Christmas is a big deal there. But her teacher tries hard to incorporate her Jewish traditions, and this is why we found ourselves making an enormous batch of sufganiyot tonight, ready for Matt to share them with 30 four and five year olds. He is also bringing a bag full of dreidels, and an episode of Sesame Street where Elmo learns about Hanukkah. I’m sad that I can’t be there tomorrow (but not sad that instead I have a job interview!), but I’m already smiling at what I imagine will take place in Alyce’s classroom tomorrow. Matt is an excellent professor, but a room for of kindergarteners might prove a bit more challenging!

For those of you celebrating Hanukkah, chag sameach! For those celebrating Christmas, you might want to stay clear of Alyce. Or at least keep her away from your children.

A new year (again)

Sorry for the mix-up. For those of you who read this blog through Google Reader or some other such contraption, you were delivered a half-finished post last night. Think of it as a preview. Or maybe just the consequence of a full day of cooking and celebrating the Jewish New Year with good friends. By the time last night rolled around, I was toast.

So, let's try this again. L'Shanah Tovah, everyone! As someone who loves fresh starts, I adore the extra new year celebration that Judaism sneaks in. Another chance to think about old and new goals, another excuse to bake. This Rosh Hashanah was extra special for me this year, because it marked the first time that ringing in the new year felt like a holiday to me. I'm a convert to Judaism and no matter how much I've studied, and no matter how many new habits I've embraced, it takes time to reprogram my internal holiday schedule. I've always loved Rosh Hashanah in all its autumn glory, but this year the day felt special. I spent the day baking and cooking, preparing for friends to join us for dinner. Alyce made taped a new year greeting on the door. There were babies, food, and many wishes for a sweet year ahead. Not a bad way to spend a fall day.

And there was food. I made this challah, and I think it was a personal best. I substituted about two or three cups of whole wheat flour, and the results were a slightly more wholegrain bread that was still light and airy. For dinner, along with the apples and honey traditional to Rosh Hashanah celebrations (the honey helps everyone to usher in a sweet year ahead), I made this chicken, which I adore. I did learn, however, that I shouldn't overcrowd the chicken trying to fit it all in one cast iron pan (took longer to cook and didn't get as crispy). And for dessert we dined on these brownies and some peach and apple crisp. The company made everything worth it, especially the chance to help baby J celebrate his first Rosh Hashanah.

It should also be noted that Alyce enjoyed the traditional Rosh Hashanah gift of her first Barbie doll (well, it might be a tradition one day). Alyce and Barbie had a lovely day together (pictured above). I think they were fast friends.

Happy New Year!

Finally Friday night

 

 

What a relief that we made it to Friday night. These photos are from a few weeks ago when Alyce was making Shabbat in her room, one of her favourite ways to pass the time. I find such a sweetness in watching her make her own Shabbat table. As a convert to Judaism, I don't have these kinds of memories. I didn't paint my own candle sticks and practice saying the blessings as a little girl (though I certainly have memories of my own, and have since practiced that blessing many times).  I think it's exciting that Alyce and Shira will know Judaism in a different way than I ever will.

I hope everyone can sit down tonight with people they love, some good food, and maybe even a delicious glass of wine. Have the best of weekends!

Can You Send a Blog a Valentine? Made of Bread?

I love the internet.

Would you like to know why? Because I'm going to tell you.

(Please forgive the photo, but I wanted to offer proof!)

I made this bread a few days ago. As in, I came home from the gym, got Shira set up in her kitchen exersaucer (from where she can supervise), and made this most delightful bread. It took about 10 minutes from start to oven, and was cooling on the counter an hour later. And it is with thanks to the internet that our family came to devour this bread.

I started making my own challah a few years ago, though only very sporadically. After a year of classes and meetings and more classes, I had converted to Judaism before Matt and I were married (I was finally a Jew just a few days after Passover 2007). So when I began making challah, my kitchen wasn't filled with recipes passed down from parents and grandparents. I was faced instead with a few Jewish cookbooks and a counter covered in flour, yeast, and honey. Never mind trying to braid it. I was proud of my lumpy bread, and Matt, Alyce and the cats all enjoyed it. But making challah without a community of challah bakers and eaters was a lonely business, and so it didn't happen too often (we had just moved to Delaware, hadn't found a synagogue yet, and didn't know a single person).

There are a lot of reasons that I credit the internet, and blogging community in particular, for changing how I felt about baking my own bread, and how I felt about parenting. I was lonely for some community in so many ways when we first moved here, but discovering the incredible writing of, let's face it, some pretty fantastic blogs, opened up a community for me that I hadn't expected. I was trying really hard to make some in-person friends, but it was the community of parents and cooks and knitters and general life-adventurers that got me through. Oh, I'm just swooning now. Forgive me. If I sound a bit crazy-woman-on-the-interwebs, well, so be it.

But back to bread. I started making challah again because it was showing up again and again on some of my favourite blogs. All of a sudden I have only one recipe to follow, but I got my community of challah bakers, because of course one recipe linked to another, and another, and another, and you see where I'm going with this. If blogs are good at one thing, it's gently pushing you in the direction of twenty other good ideas.

I now make a pretty decent challah. But why stop there? Why not also make this wonderful soda bread, too? And then take a photo of it and share it on your own blog. Interwebs, you've created a monster.

For those of you who observe it, have a wonderful Shabbat! For the rest of you, enjoy the greatest of Friday nights.

P.S. My favourite challah recipe.
P.P.S. The soda bread recipe that you need to make this week. Update: I forgot to add that I had to add more all-purpose flour to get the consistency right. Since I don't have a kitchen scale, it might be just because I had the conversions a bit wrong.