Challah, 5782

Every year I bake challah for Rosh Hashanah, and every year it takes me by surprise. My recipe doesn’t change at all — after years of trial and error, I’ve settled on a modified version of the delicious challah recipe in the Silver Palate Cookbook. I add honey and an extra egg yolk, and blend water with the milk for a softer crust.

I didn’t grow up with a mother who baked, and we never had challah for Rosh Hashanah. I don’t think there was a bakery in our very non-Jewish neighborhood in northern Virginia that even knew what challah was. So baking for the Jewish New Year is a tradition I’ve created for my family.

What is different each year is what I discover in the process of challah-making: measuring cups of flour, setting out the big wooden bread board and mixing bowls for my dough. And then hours of mixing, kneading, rising, kneading and rising again, and finally baking. The process is often meditative, and sometimes deeply healing.

One year in graduate school after a bad breakup with my long-time boyfriend, baking challah became pure catharsis: I pounded the dough with relish, and sobbed while I sat in my solitary apartment kitchen waiting for it to rise.

In 2001, Rosh Hashanah began on September 17, just days after 9/11, when we were all still in shock. Baking challah that year felt like an act of hope and resistance. I remember standing in my kitchen staring out the window while my dough rose, nestled in its bowl. Days earlier I had finally heard from my sister and my dad –who both lived in Manhattan — that they were safe. My son was in pre-school, where his teacher was explaining that something bad had happened but that everything was going to be OK. Was it really? I couldn’t think of what to do, except to bake bread. Preparing for the holiday was at least a purpose, and making challah was something I knew how to do, that could make the world feel safer and sweeter, even if only for a little while.

This year, as we enter Year 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic, baking Rosh Hashanah challah feels especially poignant. In Vermont, the Jewish New Year arrives just as summer is waning and the tips of leaves on the maple trees are showing a tinge of red. Mingled with the passing of another year is the changing of the seasons, which for me ushers in complicated feelings of both possibility and dread. I’m eager for change, and yet afraid of what this winter will bring, as we all retreat back indoors from the double threat of freezing-cold winter weather and the surging virus.

My husband Bill and I were supposed to be spending the holiday with dear friends from Austin, Texas. Last Rosh Hashanah, when we cancelled our plans to celebrate together in person due to COVID, and instead tried an awkward FaceTime call, we never imagined that we’d be in the same place again in the fall of 2021.

Our extended family is spread across several states, hours away. My stepsons and their families, who live in Philadelphia, aren’t Jewish, and our son Jake — who was raised on my challah — lives in Brooklyn now with his partner. My mom is in Virginia and my sister is in New York City. Another dear friend is even farther away, in Florida. As much as I wish I could jump in the car and bring them each a loaf of my bread warm from the oven, that’s not going to happen this year, either.

But beyond missing friends and family, and my distress at where our country is at this moment, behind the chill of autumn in the air, there is something else this year. As I stir two packages of dry yeast into a 112-degree mixture of warm milk, butter, and honey and set a timer for ten minutes, I realize this: I love baking bread because it is so exacting and precise. Because when I bake, I have to give myself over completely to my ingredients, and obey their laws.

When you are baking bread, timing and measuring matters. If you mix yeast into liquid that is too hot or too cold, the yeasties won’t activate and your dough will never rise properly. If you allow too much time for the rising stage, the bread will puff up and then collapse once it’s in the oven.

In other kinds of baking and cooking, spontaneity is a plus, and errors of timing or ingredients can usually be fixed. A pie crust that splits can be mended with a little patch of dough; a soup or stew that tastes too bland can be kicked up a notch by adding salt, garlic, or cayenne. (Of course, there was that time I mixed peppermint extract into my peach pie filling, instead of vanilla….there was no fixing that pie, but that is another story).

For someone like me who tends to be a control freak, being required to let go and follow what my bread dough needs is incredibly liberating. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I turn over the entire day to baking, and make no other plans. This sometimes involves banishing my husband from the kitchen, so there are absolutely no distractions. For six hours, I can simply immerse myself in following my reliable, time-tested recipe for perfect challah. I love the warmth and aliveness of the dough under my hands. My entire body moves with my kneading strokes, and flour flies everywhere. As I stretch and push the elastic dough, my hips and legs stretch, too, until I’m almost standing in Warrior Two — one of the many yoga poses I’ve somehow forgotten during the pandemic.

I find myself crying a little, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because as the entire kitchen fills with the wonderful, comforting smell of baking bread, I’m wishing more of the people I love could be here to enjoy it with me. I wish this pandemic was over already, and I wish more people in our country cared enough to put a damned mask on their faces.

Or maybe it’s the push and pull that always finds me on the eve of the New Year, between regret for the time gone by and hope for the future. Between wanting the world, and myself, to change and longing to just let it be. Push and pull, kneading and resting. Challah, here I am again.