sarah in nyc

 We switched our house back to Chametz-mode last Saturday night, so today is our first post-Pesach challah. It felt wonderful getting back to the really pleasurable job of kneading challah. Today, my Facebook feed was filled with photos of Schlissel challot.  A Schlissel challah is a custom to bake challah in the shape of a key to help open the gates of heaven on the Shabbat after Pesach. Or more properly, it is a Slavic Easter bread tradition to bake a loaf of bread in the shape of St. Peter's key. Just as I don't put a conifer in my house at Chanukah time to say, symbolize the wooden posts installed at the rededication of the Temple I don't bake such an iconographically Christian challah. So sorry folks, no Schlissel challah here.  I made a batch of two stranded challot. I made eight small challot rather than four big ones because it is just the two of us eating. Here is a visual on how to make two stranded challot. Roll out one strand of dough. I had rolled the dough i...

Friday I had planned to do a challah braiding tutorial for the blog. Unfortunately, my photos were being held in some kind of an internet cloud purgatory and were not available to me until after Shabbat had begun...so here is the rest of what I had begun on Friday. When I had left off I had two strands of dough. I am thinking that it might be easier to understand how to do a two-stranded braid if I pretend that I am a Japanese craft book and only show images of the process rather than explaining in words.. Sometimes words get in the way of explaining how to do a series of simple physical moves. Back when I was teaching little kids I found that I could get kids as young as three or four to make complicated origami forms if I didn't talk but showed them what I was doing step by step. I am braiding left handed because I am using my camera in my right hand. This was the final result. If you have questi...