Challah

[astra_nomer]

Last week, DS1 got it into his head that he wanted to make bread. He was inspired by What Do People Do All Day, that classic Richard Scarry book. And hey, Rosh Hashanah is coming up. So we made some challah (known as yellowbread to DS1) over the weekend.

"Can you say CHallah?" "Hallah." "CH, CH, CHallah." "Hh Hh hallah." "Close enough."

"Don't put too much yeast in!" (You have to have read the book...)

"It's good, but a little too sweet." "It's supposed to be sweet." "Oh, well then it's fine."

I used the holiday challah recipe from the Jewish Holiday Cookbook, from which comes all my knowledge regarding Jewish holidays. It's basically an extra-sweet egg bread. I was short on honey, so I threw in a little extra sugar, and it turned out plenty sweet. We made two loaves -- one a regular braided loaf, the other a lumpy spiral, because I seem to be incompetent at shaping bread. And since we started Saturday after dinner, I stuck it in the fridge overnight for the second rise and baked it in the morning. Mmmm, fresh-baked challah for breakfast!

Comments

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Around his age we started calling it hully bread.

Yay baking!

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

We had fun! I hadn't made bread by hand in a while. I should bake bread with the kids more often.

What Do People Do All Day

[(Anonymous)]

Our copy of that book totally disintegrated. I was surprised how thin it was when I saw it in a store---our copy had a taped-up spine about an inch thick, with dogeared pages to match.

I hear it's terribly gender-roles-incorrect in the post-working-mom world. My own memories on this point are vague, but it was certainly written in an era when mom stayed home with the kids.

-JWM

Re: What Do People Do All Day

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Yes, the gender roles are terribly backward. All the workers are men. All the women are mommies. They have names like "Farmer Cat" and "Mommy Cat." I think I need to do a better job of replacing 'he' with 'she' when I read it.

Re: What Do People Do All Day

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

There's a nurse.

I think people have heard my anecdote about this but I'll retell it anyway.

The first time I read that book to your DS1 I was shocked. I had such strong memories of the book from my childhood. But this wasn't the same book. This book had such strong gender roles!

A few weeks later I paged through it slowly while he was demanding my company but refusing to let me do anything in that standard toddler way. All of a sudden something clicked. And I realized that as a child I viewed all of the people in pants as being either women or men. So from my point of view women could do any job in the book, but men could only do the pants jobs.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Oh, yum!

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Yum, indeed!