Challah

A little more about Challah

Challah, pronounced by us Californians as “Holla!” (as in “I ain’t yo holla back girl!”) is not just one of our absolute, “most favoritist” breakfast treats (the French toast made with this bread is to die for!) but we’ve also made it into an incredible bread pudding, toasted and smothered it with our favorite jam, topping with a slice of aged-cheddar, or just taken it apart, piece by soft-delicious piece like the lions of the Serengeti.

But, out of respect for the inventors, perfecters, and traditional partakers of this bread, we can’t, in good conscious, omit a brief homage to it’s roots. The word challah’s beginning is most likely traced back to Numbers 15:20 (yeah, Old Testament stuff here). Neither of us read Hebrew, but to the best of our ability, in our research, we found that this name came from the practice of baking the dough that was left over after first making a dough-offering to YWHW. The offering represented both trust and reliance on God’s continued faithfulness in sustaining His people. Traditionally made on Shabbat, the seventh day of the week, often anglicized as Sabbath, was (and remains to this day among people of Jewish faith) a day set aside for rest and remembrance of the Creation, the Exodus, and looking forward a future age of deliverance, known as a Messianic Age. We can certainly join our Jewish brothers and sisters in honoring this ancient tradition by taking time out of our week to contemplate how God has been faithful to us, enjoy quality time with family, or just take a moment to breath and relax from our hectic workaday lives.

Whether you make something amazing out of this versatile bread, ravage it like a starving predator, or delicately parse out the loaf one piece at a time, you will undoubtedly be struck with the sense that this bread seems to, in some small way, satiate your soul as well as your appetite. Shabbat shalom.