Reisi's recipe for delicious Challa:
1 ½ kg flour 1 table spoon salt 1 cup sugar 3 eggs 1 cup oil 600ml lukewarm water 2 ounces fresh yeast
Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water with a tablespoon sugar.
Leave it for about 10 min.
Put the salt in the bottom of the bowl and then add the other ingredients add the yeast last.
Mix slowly to start off and then on a high speed for 10min.
Let it rise for 1 - 1+1/2 hours in a warm place covered.
Take challa (for this amount without a bracha)
Braid them, place them in the pans and brush the challoth with a beaten egg and let them rise for another hour.
Bake for 30-40 min on 160c.
Women, can rectify the world by taking the Chol - the mundane and elevating it and making it all Kadosh - in a similiar vein to mixing the flour and water - join the physical with the spiritual.
The Nitty Gritty How To
The mitzvah of "taking challah" applies any time you make dough (even during the week) using a kilo (2.2 pounds) of any one or combination of five flours: wheat, spelt, rye, barley or oats.
First, mix the flour with water (and any other ingredients that you use). When it turns into dough, take about a handful from the mixture, separate it from the rest, raise the piece up and declare, "This is challah." Now put aside the piece you removed from the dough ("the challah"), and bake the rest. In times of the Holy Temple, this piece would be consecrated for use by the kohanim (priests) and their families. Today, although the Temple no longer exists tangibly, it is still the focus of our spiritual vision of our identity as a people. To commemorate it, we take the piece of dough and either discard it (after wrapping it so that it doesn't come in direct contact with the rest of the trash) or burn it. If you burn it, it should be wrapped in aluminum foil, and nothing else should be baking in the oven at the same time.
The moment after "challah" (what the piece is called) is removed is a time of profound spiritual closeness to God. It is a conduit between this reality and a level of being far beyond the walls of our kitchens. Many women will take advantage of this moment to pray for their families, for our people, and for the restoration of the Temple, or for anyone who is in need of special merit.
If you are baking a large dough (using 2.2 kilo / 5 pounds of flour according to Ashkenazi custom, or 1.7 kilo / 4 pounds according to Sephardic custom), a blessing is said before removing the piece of dough. The blessing is:
Baruch ata Adonoy, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kidishanu bimitzvo'sav, vitzivanu lihafrish challah min ha-issa.
Blessed are You God, King of the Universe, Who made us holy with His commandments, and commanded us to separate challah from the dough.
By invoking God's name, the force of the act is far greater. Because of this, some women will make a large dough so that they can say the blessing.
[If you live outside of Israel, and forget to separate the dough and have no other bread to use on Shabbat, you can take off a little piece (without saying "this is challah" or saying a blessing) and eat the bread. In Israel, the bread is considered to be actually "unkosher" until the proper blessing is said after Shabbat.]
To view photos from the Challah Baking Session please click here
To read Tabitha Goldman poem about making challah with Grandma Irene (Lee).... please click here
(Taken with permission from the Aish.com website)
May. 25th - 26th
5th Sivan
Begins: 20:46
Ends: 22:03
Sedra: Bamidbar