This traditional bread brings blessings to the home, even if it doesn't tun out perfectly.
BY SHARYN LONSDALE
CORRESPONDENT
Rivka Schmerling grew up in Brooklyn with a grandmother who would bake challah for everyone. If they needed more, they could walk to a bakery down the block.
Schmerling, 23, started the Chabad of Venice and North Port with her husband, Rabbi Sholom Schmerling, in 2005. As host of holiday and Sabbath dinners often for more than a dozen people, Schmerling had no access to a kosher bakery and no choice but to start baking the traditional Jewish yeast bread.
She soon found out it wasn't as easy as Grandma made it look to produce a bread rich with eggs and a light, airy texture.
Schmerling admits several "challah mishaps" resulting in bread she would have preferred not to serve to company. She was hoping for better luck when she taught a challah-baking workshop at her home last week to 13 women, including Ann Wacholder of Warm Mineral Springs, me and my teenage daughters.
I knew baking challah would be a particular challenge for me. My previous bread-baking experiences have resulted in a too-sour sourdough, paperweight pumpernickel and friendship bread that I wouldn't serve to my worst enemy.
Wacholder, who grew up in Brooklyn and whose grandmother, she says, "was a phenomenal challah baker," is right there with me. "I'm a great cook, lousy baker," she said.
But the memories of fresh-baked challah at the holidays were enough to draw us avowed nonbakers to the workshop.
This was the first experience baking challah for most of us. Instead of mixing bowls, we mixed our dough in dishwashing tubs, the way Schmerling's grandmother made her dough. To give us a fighting chance, Schmerling got the water to the right temperature to activate the yeast, the key to a happy challah.
"If the yeast comes out good, you've got a good challah; if not, so sorry," she said with a smile.
I was relieved when my tub started foaming up, but things weren't going as well for Helga Melmed of Venice. "It just sat there," she said as she dumped out her tub and started all over.
Wacholder and others chose whole-wheat flour for their challah. The secret to this, says Schmerling, is using flour with wheat gluten to keep the challah from getting "heavy as a rock."
Into the yeast mixture went all the other ingredients, including what seemed like an entire 5-pound bag of flour. Then we put on our plastic gloves to knead the dough.
Well, most of us did. Beth Campbell of North Port brought her 11-year-old daughter, Stephanie, to the workshop, but Stephanie wasn't up to sinking her hands into the sticky ball of dough, despite her mom's insistence that the process was "a lot of fun."
My own daughters were all for a bit of dough smackdown. We kneaded, punched, added flour, and more or less guessed when we thought the dough was ready.
Then we bagged it up while Schmerling told us of the history and importance of the woman's role of baking challah. Now it seemed even more crucial that I didn't fail Challah 101.
But back at our station, it appeared that the dough had not risen to the occasion. Comparing it to other mounds, we thought ours seemed small. Sensing my alarm, Schmerling came to check out our dough. "It feels heavy," she said, adding, "It might be OK," after she saw "another bread disaster" written all over my face.
Gamely, we attempted to braid the challah, which by the way, is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. We also made a round loaf to freeze for Rosh Hashana, when challah is traditionally round to signify the cycle of the new year.
As we drove home, the car smelled like a bakery on wheels and when I saw that the loaves had risen more, I was almost optimistic.
We decided to pop our best loaf in the oven, but I took one look and knew that nobody outside the immediate family would ever taste it. The bread looked nothing like golden brown loaves I remember from my childhood, let alone the ones I've picked up at my supermarket bakery.
Things got worse when I attempted to move the two other unbaked loaves onto a baking sheet and they instantly deflated. But it turns out I wasn't the only one with challah problems.
"It came out of the oven flat as a pancake," said Wacholder on the phone the next day. "It tasted like nice whole-wheat bread, flat whole-wheat bread but edible."
Melmed said she left her challah overnight on the counter, and "when I woke up in the morning it was one big glob." She rebraided it, even getting a few extra rolls out of the dough. The result: "It tastes very good, but it's very heavy," Melmed said.
"Some weeks it comes out better than others. Most people, to get a perfect challah, it takes them a few times," said Schmerling, as I recounted our tales of bread gone bad. However, she said, that should not stop us from trying again. She believes that when it comes to challah, it's the process and not the product. Light or heavy, soft or chewy, it's more than a tradition. "It's a mitzvah," said Schmerling, referring to the rituals and ceremony of baking challah. "It brings a lot of blessings to the home."
BY SHARYN LONSDALE
CORRESPONDENT
Rivka Schmerling grew up in Brooklyn with a grandmother who would bake challah for everyone. If they needed more, they could walk to a bakery down the block.
Schmerling, 23, started the Chabad of Venice and North Port with her husband, Rabbi Sholom Schmerling, in 2005. As host of holiday and Sabbath dinners often for more than a dozen people, Schmerling had no access to a kosher bakery and no choice but to start baking the traditional Jewish yeast bread.
She soon found out it wasn't as easy as Grandma made it look to produce a bread rich with eggs and a light, airy texture.
Schmerling admits several "challah mishaps" resulting in bread she would have preferred not to serve to company. She was hoping for better luck when she taught a challah-baking workshop at her home last week to 13 women, including Ann Wacholder of Warm Mineral Springs, me and my teenage daughters.
I knew baking challah would be a particular challenge for me. My previous bread-baking experiences have resulted in a too-sour sourdough, paperweight pumpernickel and friendship bread that I wouldn't serve to my worst enemy.
Wacholder, who grew up in Brooklyn and whose grandmother, she says, "was a phenomenal challah baker," is right there with me. "I'm a great cook, lousy baker," she said.
But the memories of fresh-baked challah at the holidays were enough to draw us avowed nonbakers to the workshop.
This was the first experience baking challah for most of us. Instead of mixing bowls, we mixed our dough in dishwashing tubs, the way Schmerling's grandmother made her dough. To give us a fighting chance, Schmerling got the water to the right temperature to activate the yeast, the key to a happy challah.
"If the yeast comes out good, you've got a good challah; if not, so sorry," she said with a smile.
I was relieved when my tub started foaming up, but things weren't going as well for Helga Melmed of Venice. "It just sat there," she said as she dumped out her tub and started all over.
Wacholder and others chose whole-wheat flour for their challah. The secret to this, says Schmerling, is using flour with wheat gluten to keep the challah from getting "heavy as a rock."
Into the yeast mixture went all the other ingredients, including what seemed like an entire 5-pound bag of flour. Then we put on our plastic gloves to knead the dough.
Well, most of us did. Beth Campbell of North Port brought her 11-year-old daughter, Stephanie, to the workshop, but Stephanie wasn't up to sinking her hands into the sticky ball of dough, despite her mom's insistence that the process was "a lot of fun."
My own daughters were all for a bit of dough smackdown. We kneaded, punched, added flour, and more or less guessed when we thought the dough was ready.
Then we bagged it up while Schmerling told us of the history and importance of the woman's role of baking challah. Now it seemed even more crucial that I didn't fail Challah 101.
But back at our station, it appeared that the dough had not risen to the occasion. Comparing it to other mounds, we thought ours seemed small. Sensing my alarm, Schmerling came to check out our dough. "It feels heavy," she said, adding, "It might be OK," after she saw "another bread disaster" written all over my face.
Gamely, we attempted to braid the challah, which by the way, is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. We also made a round loaf to freeze for Rosh Hashana, when challah is traditionally round to signify the cycle of the new year.
As we drove home, the car smelled like a bakery on wheels and when I saw that the loaves had risen more, I was almost optimistic.
We decided to pop our best loaf in the oven, but I took one look and knew that nobody outside the immediate family would ever taste it. The bread looked nothing like golden brown loaves I remember from my childhood, let alone the ones I've picked up at my supermarket bakery.
Things got worse when I attempted to move the two other unbaked loaves onto a baking sheet and they instantly deflated. But it turns out I wasn't the only one with challah problems.
"It came out of the oven flat as a pancake," said Wacholder on the phone the next day. "It tasted like nice whole-wheat bread, flat whole-wheat bread but edible."
Melmed said she left her challah overnight on the counter, and "when I woke up in the morning it was one big glob." She rebraided it, even getting a few extra rolls out of the dough. The result: "It tastes very good, but it's very heavy," Melmed said.
"Some weeks it comes out better than others. Most people, to get a perfect challah, it takes them a few times," said Schmerling, as I recounted our tales of bread gone bad. However, she said, that should not stop us from trying again. She believes that when it comes to challah, it's the process and not the product. Light or heavy, soft or chewy, it's more than a tradition. "It's a mitzvah," said Schmerling, referring to the rituals and ceremony of baking challah. "It brings a lot of blessings to the home."
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