BAKING BRAIDED BREAD was not the peaceful meditation I thought it’d be when I set out to make challah this week for Shabbat. Instead of slowing me down and bringing me into closer touch with the divine, my mind decided to stress about the delicate matter of degrees.
From the moment active dry yeast touches warm water, I panicked about the exactness of its temperature. I kneaded this dough until my shoulders ached, my wrists weakened, my head hurt. And then I questioned the kitchen temp—was it too cold or too hot for this dough to do its thing? And then I started to wonder if the dough was still too hard—too many cracks in its roundness—to rise right.
So I covered the dough and threw it in the fridge overnight, thinking I would step away for long enough to bring god back to the collaboration. I didn’t want to bake a challah that carried the residual doubts of a novice baker. I wanted to bake this bread with love—love for the universe and me in it—and so I slept, and so I waited.
This morning, I woke up early, at seven thirty, to take a peek and guess what, it was still hard as a rock in the same ball shape I left it last night, just waiting there in the Pyrex bowl with the light blue decals. And I was like, OK, little ball of dough, let’s collaborate and see what life might live within us both.
Why did it feel like baking bread was like trying to get pregnant—the exactness of timing and temperature had me wondering why getting anything started feels so fragile and fraught—though I’ve never tried to get pregnant and in fact have spent most of my adult life avoiding it!
I turned on the oven and then off again, just enough to warm it up, and then threw the ball of dough in there, covered, to breathe and grow with the hours. I’ll check in on it again at eleven, but I’ve already told myself that if this loaf of bread fails to thrive, I will not fret, yet still wonder how something so simple is actually quite complex.
And I’ll likely drive to the local Jewel’s, where I can pick up a loaf of glossy egg-glazed challah from North Shore Bakery, as if the failed experiment—to create something out of nothing—(yeast is not nothing, and neither is flour, but you get what I mean)—never happened. We can’t correct all mistakes this easily, but bread is forgiving, there are enough of us out there who have mastered the mystery of rising.
During the pandemic, when everyone else was making sourdough, I became obsessed with the challah makers on Instagram. I’d watch strangers braid six-strand loaves with impossible ease and attempt a few times to make my own.
But eventually I stopped trying. It was easier to buy a beautiful challah than wrestle with flour and yeast, and easier to imagine myself observing the sabbath than to actually build the ritual into my week.
Growing up, we never really celebrated Shabbat. I learned about it in Hebrew school, I certainly attended Shabbat dinners at my Israeli friend’s home in Skokie. And I still remember honoring the ritual at Jewish overnight camp in Wisconsin—how we took showers, got dressed up, and appeared in the large group circle with our hair still wet, ready to sing folk songs strummed on an acoustic guitar, and light the candles as the sun went down behind us and disappeared into the woods.
But beyond that, Shabbat was something more observant Jews did—not me—someone who’d circled the rituals for years but never really committed to any of it, opting more into spiritual practices adjacent to the ones assigned to me.
It wasn’t until more recently, reading about the ritual of rest built into Jewish tradition, that I decided to host a Shabbat dinner at my house. I like the idea of slowing down on the weekend, but rarely reorient in that direction. I always think I’ll turn off my phone, focus on reclining, reading, relaxing, praying—but never quite get there.
Until the here and now.
How sweet to enter the suite of a novice, to knead with a beginner’s mind, to toil and sweat beyond the curve of one’s capacities, to break into bread-making just for the love of ritual and tradition, when it’s easy enough to buy it at the store! Too many bakeries in my area would delight at the chance to provide me with a loaf or two of their best challah—ones that even have raisins!
But I know deep down in my heart it’s the effort that counts—that when I throw my weight into my hands as I’m wrestling this dough into a shape, I’m also speaking to my ancestors who struggled with the same simple ingredients to create the miracle of bread for the sabbath—with eggs—with oil—and with the luxury of time and peace—to let it rise.
From the moment active dry yeast touches warm water, I panicked about the exactness of its temperature. I kneaded this dough until my shoulders ached, my wrists weakened, my head hurt. And then I questioned the kitchen temp—was it too cold or too hot for this dough to do its thing? And then I started to wonder if the dough was still too hard—too many cracks in its roundness—to rise right.
So I covered the dough and threw it in the fridge overnight, thinking I would step away for long enough to bring god back to the collaboration. I didn’t want to bake a challah that carried the residual doubts of a novice baker. I wanted to bake this bread with love—love for the universe and me in it—and so I slept, and so I waited.
This morning, I woke up early, at seven thirty, to take a peek and guess what, it was still hard as a rock in the same ball shape I left it last night, just waiting there in the Pyrex bowl with the light blue decals. And I was like, OK, little ball of dough, let’s collaborate and see what life might live within us both.
Why did it feel like baking bread was like trying to get pregnant—the exactness of timing and temperature had me wondering why getting anything started feels so fragile and fraught—though I’ve never tried to get pregnant and in fact have spent most of my adult life avoiding it!
I turned on the oven and then off again, just enough to warm it up, and then threw the ball of dough in there, covered, to breathe and grow with the hours. I’ll check in on it again at eleven, but I’ve already told myself that if this loaf of bread fails to thrive, I will not fret, yet still wonder how something so simple is actually quite complex.
And I’ll likely drive to the local Jewel’s, where I can pick up a loaf of glossy egg-glazed challah from North Shore Bakery, as if the failed experiment—to create something out of nothing—(yeast is not nothing, and neither is flour, but you get what I mean)—never happened. We can’t correct all mistakes this easily, but bread is forgiving, there are enough of us out there who have mastered the mystery of rising.
During the pandemic, when everyone else was making sourdough, I became obsessed with the challah makers on Instagram. I’d watch strangers braid six-strand loaves with impossible ease and attempt a few times to make my own.
But eventually I stopped trying. It was easier to buy a beautiful challah than wrestle with flour and yeast, and easier to imagine myself observing the sabbath than to actually build the ritual into my week.
Growing up, we never really celebrated Shabbat. I learned about it in Hebrew school, I certainly attended Shabbat dinners at my Israeli friend’s home in Skokie. And I still remember honoring the ritual at Jewish overnight camp in Wisconsin—how we took showers, got dressed up, and appeared in the large group circle with our hair still wet, ready to sing folk songs strummed on an acoustic guitar, and light the candles as the sun went down behind us and disappeared into the woods.
But beyond that, Shabbat was something more observant Jews did—not me—someone who’d circled the rituals for years but never really committed to any of it, opting more into spiritual practices adjacent to the ones assigned to me.
It wasn’t until more recently, reading about the ritual of rest built into Jewish tradition, that I decided to host a Shabbat dinner at my house. I like the idea of slowing down on the weekend, but rarely reorient in that direction. I always think I’ll turn off my phone, focus on reclining, reading, relaxing, praying—but never quite get there.
Until the here and now.
How sweet to enter the suite of a novice, to knead with a beginner’s mind, to toil and sweat beyond the curve of one’s capacities, to break into bread-making just for the love of ritual and tradition, when it’s easy enough to buy it at the store! Too many bakeries in my area would delight at the chance to provide me with a loaf or two of their best challah—ones that even have raisins!
But I know deep down in my heart it’s the effort that counts—that when I throw my weight into my hands as I’m wrestling this dough into a shape, I’m also speaking to my ancestors who struggled with the same simple ingredients to create the miracle of bread for the sabbath—with eggs—with oil—and with the luxury of time and peace—to let it rise.
