(This publication is a combination of previous posts Part 1 and Part 2.)
In the moment of trying a new to me but otherwise traditional recipe, I’m often led from a sense of inspiration from within, rather than a know-how from my brain’s experience. It’s like I don’t know if I’m actually doing it “right”, but rather the actually process feels like the right thing to do.
This particular time, I mixed the ingredients….
First with a wooden spoon and then by hand. The 5- hundred something grain of flour, the tepid water, the yeast, the salt and two eggs. It became a gooey gunk of not yet blended dough.
And I’m questioning whether the outcome is actually going to end up with something worth doing!
My hands, my eyes, feel and see what looks like a mess in the blue rimmed white porcelain mixing bowl. So my brain refers to the recipe to make sure that this gooey gunk is actually right.
After comparing the picture in the cookbook with what’s in from of me, there’s the internal and then external simpatico response of “hmmm, okay I’ll keep going…” And then I gather the big pale glob from the bowl and put it on the floured counter.
Faith gets involved now as my continued kneading isn’t quite yielding the results that my heart craves….
…My heart, or really my soul is craving making this bread- this Challah, that my ancestors made. I crave to knead the dough to end up looking like something recognizable, as I crave connection to my ancestors.
Funny enough I had the opportunity to learn to make this Challah recipe while living in Germany- not too far from the land where some of my family once lived. I had found out that this style of braiding the Challah was actually started in the southern part of Germany- where I mostly resided, but a bit north….But I digress…There is an interweaving of thoughts coming in and out of my consciousness as I continue to knead the dough- when suddenly I realize that the dough is in fact coming together!
It’s funny, ya’ know—this process of learning to make something for the first time. It’s like this disconnect between what my brain is interpreting when reading the recipe —but also what my brain is saying as if from some experience really not yet had—“this can’t be right”…
But in making this dough, my heart is invested. So I decide to move forward and add trust to the list of unwritten but needed ingredients.
And so my heart trusts and finishes the kneading. Then I put the dough back in the bowl, and put a wrinkled flour dusted kitchen towel over the bowl.
And---I wait…
Again there is trust that what is supposed to happen will happen—that what I put together will actually yield something.
The funny thing of this part of the recipe is that I actually don’t “do anything”; I’m just waiting…
Such a counterintuitive ingredient when trying to “make something”…
So again, I look to the recipe to confirm exactly how long I’m supposed to wait. As if knowing the container of time, will help calm the impatience of my brain which always wants something done—as soon as possible- aka- now…
Well, I tell myself, I might as well go on to something else. And so in the “waiting and not doing anything”, I do something else which at some point includes picking my kids up from school.
I excitedly tell them that I’ve made the Challah dough that morning and when we get home we can prepare the dough for braiding and baking.
The kids are actually kind of excited about it as they have seen and tasted the results of such a recipe created by someone else. And so they are really quite hopeful that we can produce the same thing!
Once home, my kids quickly wash their hands and flour them, and with their fingers open wide, their palms plant into the dough I’ve prepared.
Their smiles turn to confusion as the texture of the dough filters through their skin—and then they are now the ones asking me: “mommy, is this right? Are you sure?!”
I smile to myself remembering my own doubt just a bit earlier. But now I am able to say to them, “let’s keep going.”
So with our combined hopeful determination we continue the steps and roll out like a snake, three sections of smooth dough. Then they start to weave the bread but stop in frustration pronouncing: “it doesn’t look like the picture mommy”….So I take their hands in my hands, and with their hands around the dough, we braid the bread as best as we can and follow the rest of the recipe steps.
Once I took it out of the oven we all looked at eachother in amazement at how nicely it looked- just like the picture! And as we waited for the bread to cool my soul smiled, as I felt a rush of warmth run through me as if from the oven, but in this case from my heart, recognizing that it was the process of making the bread with my children that was the most important part of the recipe. With a full heart, my focus shifted to my Grandma Rose.
Though not a baker herself, my Grandma Rose, was mostly concerned about the quality of bread. And I don’t mean how well it was baked, or how it looked---but she wanted to know, what were the ingredients? Was the inside of the loaf dark and dense? Were there seeds imbedded in it? And she would ask as if it was some measure of worthiness she would use to decide if it was worth it to ingest.
So the irony of having made this Challah, is that I don’t think my grandma, the lineage of my desire to make this Challah bread is actually something she would have approved of- at least not for daily eating.
However, as I made the bread, she is definitely in my presence as I can hear her: “Is it the good bread?” with her tinge of Brooklyn and Yiddish influenced accent when a question has some serious request behind it. And if the answer is “no”—there’s some unspoken condemnation against the bread that doesn’t meet her criteria!
On the other hand, my grandmother did have a rather outspoken condemnation against another type of indulgence—sugar! When we were at restaurants she would never order desserts herself and would give us the crazy eye when the rest of us did order that piece of pie or cake.
Funny thing is, that as soon as the waiter or waitress put down the plate of dessert, it was like my grandmother would whip out a spoon or fork, like a secret weapon of sorts, and be THE very first one to take a bite of the apple pie or chocolate cake!
And we would say “grandma, you said you didn’t want any dessert!” And she would say, “well, I just had to make sure if it was any good.”
So as I was with my kids making this Challah, I knew my grandma would be half marveling at it, and half questioning its health status.
But since I feel love from my grandma, I focus on how she would be happy that I’m at least making something from scratch instead of buying it from the store.
I think sometimes the traditions we pass to our own children really are just a mix (pun intended) of what’s been passed down to us, and added into what our current life and desires are. Sometimes in baking, as we use our hands and our hearts, we reflect on fond memories or longing for connection, and we can decide what to hold on to and what to let go of.
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Actually, speaking of deciding what to hold on to and what to let go of, wasn’t exactly a choice when my parents hurriedly moved from our family home of 30 years during the first year of COVID. A bunch of several factors made it impossible to go through decades of family memorabilia stored around the house and in the garage attic.
But one thing my mom hadn’t let go of was several of her pie recipes. And in a recent visit, my mom taught my daughter how to make lemon meringue pie- one of her specialties. I had decided to do a puzzle, and so I sat out, the convening of my mom and daughter in the kitchen putting together of what I remembered was a fluff of a masterpiece, with a taste as good as the pie itself looked. It was actually one of those sugar indulgences, that my grandmother Rose, her mother-in-law would approve of eating during Thanksgiving meals growing up.
So as I’m doing the puzzle, and listening to my mom and daughter in the kitchen, my mind wanders, as it often does when half of my brain is collecting the puzzle pieces and the other half sort of floats off into a gentle meditation of memories.
I remember when I was once that girl in the kitchen with my mom teaching new to me, but otherwise old family recipes.
Specifically it was the pie dough. Pie dough that my mother had learned from her grandmother Alma. Now I don’t know exactly how my great grandma Alma taught my mother, but oh wow! Creating pie dough, as I learned from my mom, is actually the opposite of the waiting that goes into the dough of preparing the Challah! Yes, there is some labor when kneading the dough, but man with pie dough- you literally wind up beating it with a rolling pin! Golly! And you have to be so quick to roll it out, because if you wait too long or go too slowly then the oil/fat gets melted and the flour mix winds up sticking to the parchment paper! So it was like a “get in there, roll it out one way, switch it another way, make it round” and then bam it had to be done, or back in the fridge it went to get hard again!
But on this October afternoon, I was glad to hear gentle words of wisdom being shared in the kitchen about making the meringue rather than the emphatic direction-ing of exacting the pie dough.
And in a moment of pause from sorting puzzle pieces, I look at my mom and daughter and remember the lesson of the Challah—the most important parts of the recipe, is the process of mixing the unwritten ingredients of connection, love, and family traditions- and yes patience, trust, and waiting are also on the list!
And so as it was about two months later during the holiday season, my daughter now 3 years older from the time of that original Challah baking experience, said she wanted to make the bread again for our church potluck. We sifted, pun intended, through our everything-Challah-bread-book for a fitting recipe. We needed a recipe that would fit the only flour I could find during holiday-grocery-shopping-during-a-storm-with-often-limited-items-on-the-shelf-craze, which was white whole wheat flour.
Amazingly, with limited help from me as I was out doing holiday-before-the-storm-comes- errands, my daughter did all the things the recipe was calling for by herself. However, she did call me to say: “mommy, I’m not sure this is right?” I smiled to myself, recalling what I had learned those years ago in Germany, and said: “Don’t worry, I bet it’s exactly the way it’s supposed to look.”
And indeed, when I got back home about an hour into the first rise, it was as fluffy as it was supposed to be! We went along with the rest of the steps and this time when it was ready to braid, my daughter didn’t need me to wrap my hands around hers to get it right like she had several years ago.
We baked the bread, checking up on it using the “oven light” instead of opening the oven door, as if not to disturb a sleeping child. We couldn’t help but smile peering through the glass seeing the bread as: “exactly what the recipe book says it’s supposed to look like.” We both beamed with delight.
Once it was done and cooled, we took a bite. It had that hearty whole wheat taste and composure of “healthy bread”- I briefly thought of my grandma Rose, randomly checked my watch to see what time it was. And out of 132 pictures that rotate on my apple watch, was an image of grandma Rose smiling. Amazing...