The ugliest challah

IMG_00005201

I had such high hopes… but it turned out so, so badly.  Well, tasty enough.  But UGLY as sin.

It all started with a video that showed a beautiful, trim Israeli lady making the most gorgeous braids with the kind of ease that you only acquire after having made thousands of them.

I watched it.  Naomi Rivka watched it.  We were inspired – hooray!

As soon as I started to pull of this complicated six-braid, everything began to go horribly wrong, starting with the ginormous octopus contraption you see at the top of this post.

From there, I created a not-too-shabby looking braided thingy…

 IMG_00005202

And then tucked it together to resemble – um, a mummified dog?

 IMG_00005203

Yuck, says Naomi Rivka.

IMG_00005207

Meanwhile, she herself was inspired by another technique she’d seen in the video to create a round challah, wrapped with a band to make it more regal.  Beautiful!

IMG_00005204 IMG_00005205 

Just to make the situation even more ridiculous, it turned out there wasn’t room on my (entire-oven-sized) baking pan for both of our challahs… so, ever the martyr, I sacrificed the (nonexistent) beauty of my own to give hers the space it needed.

IMG_00005210

After baking, she had a gorgeous, Rosh Hashanah-worthy creation, and I had something that more closely resembling a six-string guitar or the footprint a filthy giant might make, stomping through the sand.

IMG_00005212

Fortunately, the sting of failure was tempered a little by the first honeycake muffin tops of the year…

IMG_00005209

Mmm… honeycake muffin tops.  The sweet smell that proves Elul is in the air.

Speaking of Elul, did I mention I have been writing books?  It’s as good an excuse as any not to blog regularly, and if you’d like to see some you might be interested in, in case you’re shopping for kids’ picture books for Jewish holidays.

If you’d like to hear from me more often, I’ve included a signup below so you can get on my mailing list.  No obligation, just tons of (very, very occasional) fun.

Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 13, 2014 at 5:37 PM

    That's an extravagant braid, I will have to try it! I've been reading some of your challah posts - clearly I'm not the only one fascinated with challah. I recently had success with a 100% sourdough challah too, but it took more than a year to get there!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TziviaNovember 13, 2014 at 11:25 PM

      It's definitely one I want to revisit... just... maybe not right away. :-)
      Good luck!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Okay, guys... I'm turning moderation OFF on all my blogs. I will be patrolling for spam, so play nice!

Know what else you're gonna love?

Baking in Israel? Beware of FAKE condensed milk

Image
If you didn’t know any better – like I didn’t when we first came here – you’d probably assume, with good reason, that both of these tins contained condensed milk: But that’s where you’d be wrong.  Sure, at least at first glance, the Hebrew text is exactly the same: חלב מרוכז וממותק / chalav merukaz umemutak / concentrated sweetened milk.  But the English is different, and therein lies the key difference between the two – the one on the right is FAKE. Here are the ingredients of the real thing (on the left): Milk (55%), sugar (45%).  That’s it.  Pure and simple. Now, here are the ingredients
Read more

Super-Easy Thick, Spreadable, Bakeable DIY Cream Cheese in Israel

Image
Cream cheese can be a hit or miss affair here in Israel.  Sure, some brands are okay for eating, but where the native product fails is usually when it comes to baked goods that call for genuine cream cheese, as I discovered at Shavuos a couple of years ago.  It's too thin, too gummy, too shiny, whatever.  It's just... WRONG. In case you’re wondering, sour cream is called “krem gevina shamenet,” and as you can see, there are lots of flavour choices… …but none of them are anything I’d want to bake into a cheesecake. But then this year, I found out I could make my own.  And not only does it taste great, it works perfectly in recipes! I won't bother calling it a RECIPE, because it's too easy to be a recipe!  It only works if you're in Israel, simply because you can’t get Israeli dairy products here.  Then again, if you're outside of Israel, you can probably just buy Philly.  The truth is, you can buy Philly here in a lot of places as well, as...
Read more

Easy, tender, and affordable roast in Israel… yes, it IS possible!

Image
I wasn’t a big meat cook in Canada.  We ate a lot of chicken, but I was kind of shy about beef.  Still, I managed to make some acceptable roasts from time to time – meat that was tender enough and tasty enough that we could enjoy it together on special occasions. All that changed when we moved to Israel, where all the meat cuts are different from what I was used to and nothing, it seemed, was tender and tasty except the most expensive bits, like steak (which always seems to turn out tough when we make it at home, but we don’t mind because it’s delicious). But some of the English speakers here were chatting on our WhatsApp group last week about roasting beef, and it made me really want to try it again –even after having been burned numerous times.  So on Thursday evening, we bought a nice little #6 roast, which according to this indispensible meat chart is called Fillet Medumeh (פילה מדומה), petit tender, or foreshank.  The page's owner, Marc Gottlieb, says i...
Read more

More delicious kosher morsels!

Show All