food Friday parallel play edition

I suppose if I lived in a little village in Eastern Europe like my great grandmothers did, if I wanted to check out the challah my friends and neighbors were baking I would just walk down the street and stop by their kitchen to poke my head into their kitchens and we would compare techniques and results.

Amazon.com Widgets

But in some ways living in 2017 makes that friendly head poking into kitchens even easier. My friend Alan Divack is a serious cook and baker. Every week he posts his newest batch of challot on Facebook. Alan, unlike me is an analytic cook.

Often on Shabbat morning in shul we will compare the results of our challah baking of the previous day.

Lately, rather than just pulling the challah dough into 4 thick strands for baking, I have been rolling out the dough into a big rectangle,

spreading the rectangle with a mix of spices and cocoa

and then rolling it up into a tight roll which I then cut into two rolls

which get rolled even thinner and then I loop one around the other and braid.

The move from two individual strands to twisting one around the other and braising is hard to explain in words but easy to actually do.

As I drank my coffee this morning I read Alan's description on Facebook of how the structure of the challah dough changes when he rolls out his dough and then rolls the rectangle into a tight roll. as Alan wrote:

In the challah lineage that I follow, rather than just stretching the dough out into strands, you roll it into an oblong and then roll it up into a tight long strand. This both improves the texture of the final bread, giving it a wonderful long crumb , and makes it a whole lot more work

I have been thinking about how the physical structure of the dough is somehow both different and better when it is rolled like a jelly roll into the strands for braiding.

I wasn't able to put words to that difference, but my pal in the kitchen down the road, (actually uptown about a mile) did.

I love baking (virtually) alongside my friend Alan. We have also enjoyed eating each other's challot in real life.

Comments

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Revisiting a beloved piece

About thirty years ago I was asked to make an atara to be a gift for Jerry. Jerry was one of the founders of an alternative Hebrew school in our neighborhood. Jerry was also one of the people who forged an alliance between the older mostly German members of our synagogue and the young counter culture former ( and still hippies) that were the new lifeblood of our congregation nearly fifty years ago. At that point, it wasn't the easiest marriage between the old guard and the new guard but Jerry helped to break down the barriers between the suit wearing older folks and the ripped up jeans wearing younger folks. Jerry has prepared thousands of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. He is a frequent and excellent Torah reader and for many years he organized Morning Minyan. Jerry had often said that his favorite biblical text is the following: (יא) כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ (יב) לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog