Too many sourdough bakers fuss too much and make it sound like this thing is rocket science. I gave my daughter some of my starter and she got so perplexed searching online for how to care for it. So I thought I’d share how it takes me literally under one minute

Chilly weather?  Dough refusing to rise?? I feel your pain. It feels absolutely insane to be kvetching about the cold here in Israel, but the fact is, it DOES get cold here.  Not as cold as some places, but because of that, many homes don’t have central heating and you have to rely on patchy warming from air conditioners and inefficient space heaters.  Besides which, houses are built out of concrete, which not only holds onto cold, but it also feels damp—often because it is. So the cold can be very intense here.  And that can make bread very, very grumpy. Over the last few weeks as things chilled, I’ve noticed that breads are not so happy rising with the frigid air, especially when things dip down below 20 (Celsius).  After a few attempts to steam dough (setting it in a covered bowl set into another bowl or basin filled with hottish water), which led to a scare at one point when the water turned out to be too hot, I was ready to try something else....

After however-many hundreds of years, it's not often that you come across a NEW way of making challah. So when Seth Brandes shared his "dad hack" for making challah "without messing with braiding the dough," I passed it on earlier this week. (Why isn't anything moms do in the kitchen considered a hack?) I also decided to try it out.  Instead of my usual portioning, balling, rolling, snaking, and braiding steps, I formed the dough into elongated ovals and got ready to go to town.