A bread debacle
Hello friends,
I don't know if I've mentioned this in a newsletter before, but I like to make challah on Shabbat. I don't manage it every week, but most Friday evenings, my kitchen fills with the smell of fresh-baked bread. Challah is one thing my grandma never made from scratch, so I had to learn on my own. After months of tinkering with ingredients, I finally came up with a delicious recipe. It's not as eggy as some other challot, and it's sweetened with a generous amount of honey. This Shabbat, though, I decided to try out a new recipe. It did not end well.
I realized my first mistake just as I covered the dough for the first rise—I forgot the egg. If eggs could talk, the one I left sitting on the counter would have given me a pitying "bless your heart." After laughing at myself, I brushed it off. Oh well, right? Plenty of people make challah without eggs.
I noticed my second mistake after letting the dough rise for a couple of hours—my proportions were off. The original recipe calls for 5 pounds of flour, an absurd amount for two people. So I halved it, then halved it again. No problem. But I messed up somewhere along the way because my dough hadn't risen at all. When I attempted to braid the challah, it kept crumbling and was practically leaking oil. I managed to braid it, but it didn't look or feel even remotely like bread dough should. Oops.
A year ago, I probably would have spiraled into an OCD-fueled panic attack. But this weekly ritual of baking bread has taught me patience and acceptance in a way that therapy and meditation never could. Bread is notoriously finicky, but whenever I ruined a loaf, I held onto the knowledge that I would try again the next week. Baking bread is both a science and an art, and the only way to get better at either is through trial and error, repetition, and practice.
My challah this week is, quite frankly, horrendous. It is hands-down the worst challah I've ever made. I can't stop laughing at how ugly it is, and I'm sure it will taste just as bad as it looks. But I'll try again next week. I'll check my math, I'll knead the dough a bit longer, and I'll hope for the best.
Shabbat shalom,
Yardena