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Rebbetzin Rachel's Challah
Submitted by Rachel Trugman |
Recipe Ingredients:
- Mix 1½
cups warm water with
- 2
teaspoons yeast
- ¼ cup
brown sugar and watch it bubble up.
- Add one
egg
- three
tablespoons of oil and approximately 5
cups of flour, best a mixture of white and
whole wheat
- add 2
teaspoons of salt and knead into soft
elastic dough.
We need to
stay open and stretch ourselves to share our
bounty with our many guests every week. To
say the bracha on separating the “challah”
we must have a total of 2.2 kilo or 5 pounds
of flour which we get if we make 3 batches
of dough. |
Making Challah on the Moshav |
Let’s start
with bread - the
staff of life and try investigating who
might be the primary suspect in the page
turning life and death mystery whodunit set
in Gan Eden. Many commentators have debated
what might have been the real identity of
the proverbial apple fed by Eve to Adam.
Some say that the troublesome fruit was
grapes and so the excuse for not following
orders was that they were DUI. Others claim
it was a fig, note the beginnings of the rag
trade and multi billion $ fashion industry
was fig leaves. Still others say it must
have been wheat because a baby can’t speak
intelligently and say abba, ema until
they’ve tasted wheat so that must be the
“tree” of knowledge. We all know that the
best way to a man’s heart is through his
stomach. Like my mother of blessed memory
used to council me – don’t ask for anything
from your father when he first comes home
from work, wait till he sits down and has a
nice dinner before you hit him up. That’s
what I call Chochmat Nashim – women’s
wisdom.
INGREDIENTS:
Whether it is wheat, barley, spelt, rye &
oats one of these 5 grains must be the major
component of the substance we call bread
upon which we can recite the Hamotzei Lechem
Min Haaretz blessing. At classes with Rabbi
Yitzchak Ginsburgh at Kever Rachel in Beit
Lechem – The House of Bread, we learned that
the women have kept the tradition of what
those obscure grains might actually be today
and we can trust our ladies to remember
correctly. The grains must be pulverized
into flour to resemble the dust of the earth
which Hashem used to mix with the dew that
rose up from the garden floor and kneaded
into the hunk of dough called man. So
there’s your second major component – water.
If the dough is made with juice it’s not
called “bread” and gets the mezonot bracha.
Brit Melach – a covenant of salt is what our
relationship with God is called. . All life
starts in the waters of the amniotic fluid
slightly saltier than the sea. Something
perpetual that preserves – it keeps the Dead
Sea Dead and keeps meat and pickles edible
and adds flavor and helps the leavening
process. These are great metaphors for the
process of getting nourished from our
ancient heritage without getting moldy.
 “Tov
shem m’shemen tov,” (Kohelet 7:1), better a
good name than the most extra virgin olive
oil. We discovered an ancient Byzantian oil
press in our front yard back in 1976 when we
first moved to the moshav. We helped the
Antiquities Department dig up the dig whose
artifacts were carted off to the Rockefeller
museum in East Jerusalem. Life on the moshav
was very challenging in the early days of
sporadic water supplies no phones and quiet
isolation.
Paradoxically the more you crush an olive
the more lovely oil it can produce. Isn’t
that the diametric opposite of western
striving for the “good life” = easy life?
The oil of affliction softens our thick
skin, making us sensitive to others
suffering, lights up the darkest night of
Chanukah and lightens our challah. The egg
is a symbol of the cycles of life and death
the first food served to a mourner after a
funeral and the last food eaten before the
fast of Tisha B’av, round and round we go.
We make round challah with sweet raisens for
a sweet New Year.
Hamtakat Hadinim, sweetening the judgment by
adding a little brown sugar & honey to the
yeast mixture otherwise the yeastie beasties
can’t grow and bubble and do their job of
lifting and uplifting. Simcha is like the
sweetness of spirit that makes us rise up
out of our sluggish laziness. Rise up, get
going! Put on some Jewish music with a nice
steady rhythm, Reb Shlomo’s Mizmor Shir Le
Yom Hashabbos is a great one for kneading
the challah.
It’s a
moment of favor when the gates of heaven are
open when women fix the mistake of Adam and
Eve. They should have waited for Shabbos
when they would have been able to eat from
both the tree of knowledge of good and evil
and the tree of life. By separating the
little piece of challah we deny ourselves a
tiny bit of pleasure now in exchange for
infinite pleasure. Make sure your tears mix
into the dough as you pour out your heart
and ask for everything you want or need for
yourself and friends; healing for a loved
one, a soul mate, parnassa, whatever comes
to mind and heart, just let it flow. Let the
dough rise till double then sculpt into your
favorite shapes, let rise again, brush with
a little beaten egg. Sprinkle on some seeds,
those nutrient packed little germs of life
encoded with DNA = Alef Bet codes to remind
us of life giving manna in the desert and
bake at 350° around ½ hour till golden brown
and smells yummy. Listen carefully, it
should sound hollow when tapped. We use all
our senses to gain an intuition of when the
time is right to enjoy our fruits. |
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Cooking Tips: |
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