Improvement Over Time

We’re hosting Rosh Hashanah dinner at our place this year, to celebrate the Jewish New Year. I’m so excited about it. It’s such a fun time to have family over to a house filled with food and cheer. And though Greg is the cook in our family, I’m excited to do some cooking myself, too, this time around. I’ve already made dessert, and I’ll be making a noodle kugel and challah.

It had been a few months since I’d last made any challah, so last weekend I put a loaf in the oven to get back into the swing of it before I make the special round challahs for Rosh Hashanah (at this one time of year, you make them round to symbolize the circle of time and life).

Facebook reminded me last week that it was a year ago that I made challah for the first time. It awoke in me a desire to make it more and more so I could figure out my own favourite recipe (and learn how to make it pretty). Eventually, I not only mastered the six-stranded braid, but I settled on my own favourite recipe, tweaked and nudged from many I experimented with.

Looking back at those original loafs, it’s very cool to see the result of the time and effort I put in. It’s a slow process to make a loaf of bread like this – it takes pretty much all day, though much of the time is spent waiting. I loved doing it over and over again, until I got my bread to be just right – sweet and dense and perfect with some salt on it.

Here’s the recipe I use, if you want to try your hand at it, too!

We made bread! I can’t believe it! It’s light and yet also stretchy in all the best gluteny ways. I clearly didn’t make a great glaze, so that’s on the list for next week. And the recipe I followed called for sugar, but I want to try it with honey. But holy crap. At no point did I actually think we’d end up with something we’d want to eat. Success! #challah #firsttime #yearofmaking #baking #goodshabbos

A photo posted by Kim Werker (@kpwerker) on Sep 25, 2015 at 3:40pm PDT