Flour on the Floor: How to Make Challah and Religious Choices

I was never baptized.

My parents said that when I was old enough they wanted me to choose the religion that was right for me. I’m sure this sounded like a great idea in the freewheeling early 70s; they didn’t guess that I’d dither and free-float for years. When I was a child, my mom was a Methodist. My dad, well, my dad was lazy. His religion was reading the Sunday paper. He was devout. We went to church only occasionally, more anomaly than practice.  

It took me about 30 years to shift my ambiguous spirituality into a bonafide religious practice. This week’s baking project is a celebration of that; my daughter and I decide to make challah for the Jewish New Year.

I have never baked a yeast bread nor braided any sort of pastry. Yet, when we were invited to a Rosh Hashana dinner at a friend’s house, I considered the stakes—a large group of 18 people requiring a symbolic bread that is a mainstay of the holiday table—and offered to bring the challah.

The making of challah is a day-long event filled with fairly simple steps. We start first thing in the morning by making the dough—an easy task, especially with the use of standing mixer with a dough hook.

There is no dairy in the loaf so that those who keep kosher (adhering to Jewish dietary laws) can also enjoy a good brisket or roasted chicken with their holiday meal. My daughter delights in brushing a bowl with oil before we add the challah dough and cover.

Baking Illustrated says to put the covered bowl someplace warm but there’s a problem—there is no warm place in our whole house. Our home is 80 years old and drafty (interior doors open and close in concert with the gusts of wind outside). In fact, when our family goes on ski trips, I must invest in a wardrobe of new ski socks because I have invariably worn holes in all of mine from wearing them around our house for added warmth. I resort to turning the oven on and off for bursts of heat to induce the dough to rise. Then, we wait. And wait.

It was when I was in high school that I decided to finally seek a religion that was my own. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that my search was probably motivated—as many of my teen decisions were—by wanting what everyone else had. Guess jeans. A car at 16. God.

I started attending services with friends. First I tried a Catholic Church. All around me prayers were recited by heart, cleanly and systematically. Communion emptied the pews, making me feel conspicuously alone. I had imagined religion to be some sort of tangible thing—God as a rabbit’s foot I could slip into my pocket and rub when troubled. I didn’t find that sort of comfort there.

Next I went to a Mormon church with a boy I had a crush on. It was as relaxed and informal as the Catholic Church had been rigid. Everyone participated. I was called on to read aloud from a passage in the Bible—I didn’t even know how to work one of those things! I couldn’t wait to get out of there either.

I did finally join a church—a Methodist mega-church in Orlando. Trolleys ferried parishioners from the parking lot just like Disney World. We took escalators to our seats to hear a suited minister deliver his sermons to an audience of thousands in-person and on television. I turned away from the congregation after I was chastised for my taste in music (secular) as well as my selection of friends (Mormon!). A teen can only take so many Michael W. Smith tunes. I gave up on religion for a while.

According to the timer, it is now time to punch down our risen challah.

Though I’ve read that it’s part of the yeast bread-making process, it seems wrong to thwart the efforts of the dough this way. My daughter pushes down on the loaf and it deflates like a stuck balloon. I map out the timing of the rest of the challah-making (a task that, perhaps, I should have done earlier) and discover that we will be at a temple service when it’s time for the next step. Instead of the prescribed 40-60 minutes, our dough will have to sit for almost three hours. I ask my husband to run to the store and buy a back-up challah just in case this one falls flat.

I am also on the hook for a dessert and need to get the kids and myself showered and dressed for temple. I sigh and my husband commiserates by saying, “Think of how much easier it must have been long ago when there were no modern pressures. It must have been simpler.”

I remind him that back then there were other things to worry about like the plague and a goat wandering into your kitchen. But the presence of the store-bought loaf does ease my anxiety over the fact that I’m providing the baked equivalent of the religious cornerstone for the meal. We leave for temple.

In the dating world, religion came up over and over again. One date (not my husband) inquired, “Are you a member of the tribe?” After a long pause and likely a few sips of wine, I had to answer “no” on the grounds that I didn’t even understand the question. Everyone seemed interested in my spiritual status.

When my husband and I married, a rabbi and a minister officiated. My husband was Jewish; I was not. When you’re dating, this is an interesting tidbit. When you’re getting ready to start a family, this becomes the main topic of conversation. We debated and discussed Judaism until our home felt like a Yeshiva. I wanted to offer my children the foundation that I lacked. I wanted them to grow up with traditions (I am now launching into a “Fiddler on the Roof” tune and you can be grateful that there is no audio component).

Challah is traditionally split into strands and braided. It is an intricate-seeming loaf with a simple, sweet flavor. Blessings are said over the challah, then the bread is torn and passed out among the people at the table. The first time I saw this ripping of the bread, I thought it was barbaric. I’d rather a sliced piece that has not been man-handled please. But I have since learned that knives are symbolic of violence and on the Sabbath and other holy days, we want only peace. In religion, everything means something else, even a utensil. All of it is about history and to align oneself with a religion is to become part of a complicated braid of generations of people who have done the same. Tradition!

I can now look back at my girlish religious quest as both admirable and lacking depth. As an adult, I understand that just because I didn’t feel immediately at home in a Catholic Church doesn’t mean that the religion is a cold, unwelcoming one. Nor are all Methodists judgmental. My early conclusions were merely surface-level impressions. However, I give myself credit for visiting different places of worship. I did not just unquestioningly follow the straight Christian path laid by family.

My daughter and I begin the braiding process together. It is difficult to braid bread alone; it is almost impossible to do it with a four-year-old. She watches to ensure that I do not re-do any of her work. The bread rises a final time, two braids stacked on top of each other giving the illusion of one big impossible knot. It is impressive. We brush it with an egg wash which will give the baked loaf a golden sheen then wrap the dough for baking at our friends’ home.

The nice thing about having finally settled on a religion is knowing what to expect. All religions are alike in this way.

The customs and prayers said at a Rosh Hashana dinner are the same the world over. They connect us with each other and with 4,000 years of history. They unite us to something greater. Among other things I have come to expect are the same jokes about the Manichewitz wine vintage, “Ah, it was a good month!” and the Hebrew calendar year being celebrated, “It’s year 5772, but I keep writing 5771 on all of my checks!”

Our challah emerges shiny and beautiful from the oven. We pray, then rip into it—by hand before blade, of course. The crust is crunchy and the inside a little doughy. It is delicious.

I have heard that challah makes great French toast and bread pudding but I’ve never seen one stick around long enough to find out. If I had tasted this bread 30 years earlier, perhaps my religious search would have ended a little sooner.