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By Anna Rahmanan
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I start making challah on Thursday afternoon, somewhere between the after-school activity rush and the dinner rush.
The recipe came from a friend and is extremely easy, which is an important part of this story because I do not bake. It also contains no eggs, which I cannot stand using while baking for reasons I cannot defend and probably don’t belong in this piece.
Yeast, sugar and water go in one bowl. Flour, oil and salt in another. I wait about half an hour, pour the wet into the dry and start mixing. My daughters see me doing this every Thursday. They sometimes ask me if they can help, but they’ve stopped asking me what I was doing years ago.
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The odd thing about this arrangement is that I did not grow up watching my own mother make challah.
When I lived with my parents, the kitchen belonged to her. This was especially true before Shabbat, when she could produce dinner for 30 people with the uncalm (not a typo) territorial authority of someone who does not require assistance and shan't be asked if she needs help. I stayed out.
Honestly, I mostly still do. I am married, I have four children and my mother still hosts Shabbat often enough that I have never had to become the woman cooking dinner for 30 people myself. I am spoiled, yes, but that routine also tells you something about the home I grew up in: Shabbat was never treated as an optional event. Friday night arrived and everything organized itself around it.
My mother did not teach me to make challah (clearly, the non-baking genes run deep), but she taught me that Shabbat should require something of you.
When I married and had a kitchen of my own, challah became my something.
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Once the dough comes together, I tear off a small piece, say the blessing for separating challah and burn the piece, as Jewish practice requires. The rest sits covered on my counter until around midnight, when I put it in the refrigerator. Friday morning, I take it out before the gym. Before school drop-off, I braid it and put it in the oven.
By the time my younger children start coming home around 1 p.m., the house smells like freshly baked bread. I can say with some confidence that it will never regularly smell like any other baked good. Challah is the full extent of my repertoire.
At first, I made it because separating challah is one of the mitzvot traditionally associated with Jewish women. I clearly like rules, and I saw no reason to unnecessarily jeopardize my chances of getting into heaven.
Then I had daughters and, somewhere along the way, the ritual stopped being only about what I was doing and became about what they were seeing.
I have never told my daughters that they should make challah when they grow up and I honestly don't know if they will. At this moment in time, I can hardly get them into bed at their supposed bedtimes. Given my predilection for authority and inability to keep quiet, I am sure they will eventually hear my preferences on all of the above.
But motherhood has made me understand something my mother was teaching me without ever saying it: children notice what their parents arrange their lives around.
I didn't inherit my mother's Friday night menu (yet!) or her ability to feed a rotating roster of family members once a week. What I did inherit, though, was the certainty that Friday night matters. My daughters may not inherit my (well, my friend's) challah recipe either, but what I hope they'll inherently make their own is the instinct that some things deserve to interrupt the week.
That is the peculiar power of ritual: it makes an idea physical and then repeats it until the people around you no longer need an explanation. My daughters don't ask why there is dough rising on the counter every Thursday, they just know it will be there and what that means: Shabbat is coming and we all need to pay attention.
One day, I hope, they will decide that a similar scene belongs on their own counters. For now, they are watching mine.
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Water Challah Recipe
Ingredients
- 5 pounds flour
- 5 cups warm water
- 4 packets rapid-rise dry yeast (or 9 teaspoons)
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 1/4 cups oil
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
Instructions
- Activate the yeast: In a large bowl, combine the sugar and yeast. Add the warm water and mix gently. Cover and let stand for 7–10 minutes.
- Prepare the dough: In a separate large bowl, combine the flour, oil and salt.
- Combine: Slowly pour the yeast mixture into the flour mixture, mixing until a dough forms.
- First rise: Knead or mix until the dough is well combined. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 1 hour.
- Shape: Divide and braid the challah as desired. Place the loaves on a lined baking sheet or in prepared pans.
- Second rise: Cover the shaped challahs and let rise for another 30–45 minutes.
- Bake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Brush the challahs with egg wash and bake until deeply golden brown and cooked through.
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