CC, I use butter in mine, so that's not much help for you. I would try a very neutral oil, probably, like canola, or go in a completely different direction and use an oil that has a really good flavor, like walnut. I've also heard that rice bran oil has no flavor but I've never tried it.

Have fun baking with Callie!

Annie

I use butter but would switch to canola oil or a parve margarine melted if I had to for dietary reasons. Love the taste of butter. Happy baking.

I've made cakes with liquid oil, but bread is trickier. The recipe has to be well tested with oil. "Vegetable oil" in an old fashioned recipe probably meant the old Crisco oil, which would have been cottonseed or soybean oil.

Butter makes my challah fall apart! I use the zero transfat vegetable shortening and get great results. It's good in parve cakes, too. Oh, but some people put it in the pantry. I think that makes it taste rancid. It's very stable in the fridge, but you have to bring it up to room temperature to measure it easily. Earth Balance baking sticks are also parve and good for baking, but I've never used them in challah.

I've tried baking with Spectrum cold pressed palm oil, but it affected the flavor. It's possible that that was because I'm allergic to coconut and this is close enough to coconut to also taste bad, but I don't think my guests liked it either.

It's about the only thing I ever use margarine for....and then only when I make challah for those for whom it's important that it be non dairy.
Butter makes your challah fall apart? Then you have something else going on there....because butter doesn't make croissants or Danish fall apart.

Linda! Good to see you again!

Pillog, the recipe works fine with oil but I don't love the taste. I used safflower because I had it. I really dislike canola oil. I think we had a discussion about it on the forum, and found that some people taste fishiness in it.

I'm glad to hear that some people use butter. I explained to Callie that challah is made with oil so that it can be eaten with either meat or dairy. From reading these books, she wants to be Jewish now. We said she can be when she grows up. : - )

I have also used corn oil....didn't mind that at all.
Introduce Callie to Kishke and Gfilte fish.....see what she thinks then.

Linda, I have no idea how to make them. I've never eaten them either. Maybe Nova lox on her bagels? Nah, it would be one adventurous 5-year-old who would eat that. Good Jewish rye, then.

There are all kinds of yummy Jewish foods--no need to torture her with Eastern European acquired tastes--but I'd guess what Callie wants is stair steps sisters and maybe a little at home ritual. You could have a special meal on your own Sabbath, or make up a weekly one that follows your beliefs. Say grace or offer thanks, wear your special clothes, have special foods. Perhaps invite cousins and their parents, or friends. I related a lot to All-of a-Kind Family in many ways though we lived in a nice house in Southern California. I was mighty puzzled, however, at what the "downstairs bell" was. I'd seen plenty of apartments, but none that had them or intercoms or anything. The sisters were like we were with our cousins and we had Friday night dinners, and all that. So I'm guessing that's what she really wants.

Linda, "fall apart" was meant to be descriptive rather than specific, and it's the slices that do the falling apart. We slice rather than tear. As you know, butter is softer in baking than shortening or margarine. My heirloom challah recipe is a brioche style and extra rich. Butter is too soft. The recipe has always called for margarine or shortening. It's not one that was ever meant for butter. I've tried it, but it's not as good.

Re the oil, Christine, did you use a brand new fresh bottle that wasn't likely to have gotten hot before it got to you? It's possible that the oil was just a tad off. I've found that it doesn't have to smell rancid to be beyond useable, or sometimes the pourer will smell rancid but the oil tastes fine and the top just needs to be removed and washed. I say all this because safflower is what I would have suggested for neutral. The corn oil would work. That's a very '70's style thing and it tastes pretty good out of the bottle--a more distinctive flavor, but a nice one. Sunflower, maybe, would be better. I don't like canola either.

CC, she's five?

I use shortening. You are so lucky she loves to cook with you!

Funny comment, Linda. We call them acquired tastes.

Plllog, from the NewABinFive, page 296-unsalted butter, melted(can substitute oil or melted margarine). I have been using the old abin5 challah recipe for about 6 years, to rave reviews, i might add. Great recipe. Yes, if it falls apart, it's not because of the butter. Something else. Butter works in mine, beautifully. And the abin5 challah has been likely baked thousands of times by it's readers/devotees.

Kishke is a beef intestine stuffed with a mixture of cereal, suet and spices....can be very spicy.
Gfilte fish is best bought...it can come jarred, but a good deli makes the best....it is boiled, shredded and pickled carp in a jellied broth served with red beet horseradish, the hotter the better..
Neither are things a typical 5 year old would like!!! Stick with corned beef on rye!!

Westsider, I don't doubt. My recipe was developed by my mother about fifty years ago. It is fairly unusual and very particular since it wasn't professionally tested. A big favorite with all and sundry. I will say, however, that if you really can substitute oil for the butter yours is a very fancy recipe that has everything just at that particular point where all will work.

Linda, you can make better gefilte fish than can be bought! Or, you can if you have a good fishmonger who has newly caught fish. I can't because I'm allergic to the fumes, but I can usually eat a piece and I've never had mass produced that was anywhere near as good as homemade.

If i were to make it right now, meaning this morning, not the big picture, 'modern times', i would use part butter for flavor and avocado oil. I have two avocado oils. One is rich with flavor, but the other cold press is neutral. I would use the neutral that has no flavor.

All the shelf oils, canola, etc, vegetable, margarine, are not authentic. Did not exist a hundred yrs ago. Overheated, Oxidized, chemically deodorized. ----rapeseed after all the processing still stinks. (yummy.)

Butter is letting the cream separate naturally, then skim it off and shake.

My MIL uses her sourdough starter, some butter. And milk. That recipe is well over a hundred yrs.

So it seems more tradition than authentic with so many various family recipes.

Good point, Sleevendog, about what would have been available in 1900. No vegetable shortening, no processed oils. They can't have used lard, of course. Some kind of minimally processed oil? Was there palm oil? There was oIive oil, but that doesn't sound good.
I'm amazed that I have no idea about this. Baking with oil is not something I've seen in American cookbooks before the second half of the 20th century.

Thank you....lovely explanation of all the rituals and symbolism that goes with a challah.

Thanks, Linda!

I just noticed and edited my egg error at the end.

plllog, Of the 4 or 5 major American denominations of Jewry, only the observant jews, orthodox for sure and some traditionalists/conservative care about all of that ritual/perceived history/rules/kashruth/taboos/tradition/self-imposed laws associated with your thoughts about challah. Most American jews are not observant. ' Authenticity' as a word is irrelevant. Butter in challah pertains to the observation of kosher laws and not about being Jewish.

I am a reform jew (raised orthodox and kosher) and have been non-observant since the age of 14. I don't keep kosher. Butter is in and on our challah.

The authors of Artisan Bread in Five, Hertzberg and Francois, have written about Jewish holidays and the celebratory foods they have prepared. I suspect they are Jewish. Their challah recipe calls for melted butter or oil or margarine.

Westsider, I did not mean to insult you! All-of-a-Kind Family were very traditional, and most of the immigrants of the time period we're discussing were, though not as traditional as today's Orthodox Jews. It was that authenticity I was talking about. And the mother in the books burnt her challah offering, if I remember right.

BTW, anthropologically (i.e., exterior to the texts) the braided challah is probably Germanic and pagan in origin. :)

Interesting....I am not Jewish....I have family who are....and very good friends who are... but I am not.
All...not most but all Jews that I know....observant or not care about the history and those practices that some observe....whether they do or not.
I have heard it said that some are "smorgasbord Jews"....and perhaps it is so. Take what fits and leave what does not.
By my observation, those who have had the least tradition in their early lives, are most interested in learning about the traditions.....not necessarily in following but in learning.

Thanks, Pillog, for explaining the history and significance. I love tradition.
When I make any traditional bread I want to make it the old way, at
least at first. I have to dig deeper
to find out what oil people used in 1900.
You asked about the freshness of the oil. It was almost the end of the bottle, but it was kept in the fridge. Next time I'll use new.

Callie seems very tuned in to traditions. When she was three, her mother was talking to her about Christmas, about a week before, and Callie said, "And Nana will bring that bread!"
She remembered the Stollen for a year! She also remembered that there was a menorah at a friend's house.

To remember the stolen at 2....it must have been a VERY good stollen!

You're welcome. :) I've done some more research and found a few recipes from the era or just before. Some use more eggs and less to no water. Others call for vegetable shortening, which was apparently available in some form by at least the 1890's. Yesterday, I was looking for one which called for schmaltz (seasoned rendered fat, usually chicken, which is usually used in cooking of meat meals), and couldn't find any. Today, I found a reference for Germanic origin challah, with separate loaves baked for meat and dairy meals, with butter (I presume--it just says "dairy" in regards to the fat. Perhaps cream?) or beef suet.

Usually the challah is neutral (parve) because the leftovers are used for a dairy breakfast, etc., but if you can differentiate the cut bread, perhaps a different color, there's no reason not to do the two types if you can afford it. I doubt All-of-a-Kind Family, who didn't have spare food, would have done that, but it's a possibility.

My best guess is that they would have used a solid fat of some kind, if not just eggs or yolks, because that's the received tradition. You can make challah with liquid oil, but it's not what we think of, and I haven't found any old recipes calling for it yet, though I'm sure some must be out there.

Linda, I know the phenomenon you're speaking of--the hunger people who didn't have it at home have for learning--but it evens out to the full spectrum when you have a larger number of people involved. There are huge numbers of bagel Jews, who might have grown up Reform or non-observant, whose biggest "Jewish" interest is food, and there are many who grow up observant according to their philosophies, in homes of all branches from Reform to Frum, who have a deep love of learning and hunger to learn more. What you noticed has some truth, but for actual numbers doesn't hold. It further clouds things that one of the positive commandments is to study, so if you're observant of the 613 commandments, you study, and if you aren't you're still the recipient of the cultural imperative to study.

Something I find fascinating is that my world Jewish vegetarian cookbook avoids the subject of challah (or any bread) altogether!

Ah, so oil is not what seems traditional -- okay. Every recipe I've ever seen (except a couple with butter) has oil. Interesting. And you said water, a surprise. I don't use any water. I guess it would depend on how expensive eggs were at the time and place.
I'm annoyed with myself that I forgot about the piece you burn or throw away. I heard of that long ago. That would have been interesting to talk about with Callie. I wonder if she's come upon that yet in the books.

Oil is possible. I just haven't found any period recipes which use it. The German berches loaves that probably come from the same origins have potato (i.e., post New World) and vegetable oil, but I don't have a date. There are lots of Shabbat breads around the world which use oil too. A lot of it depends on what was available. Olive oil used to be very dear. I found a contemporaneous agriculture report that talks about an olive oil shortage and the lack of profit from olive oil in California at the time. So a couple of spoons of olive oil could have been the choice. They might not have been able to afford more, however, or even that much. The cottonseed oil, or perhaps soybean, is certainly a possibility. The question is how much did it cost compared to shortening or margarine, and which would have been used. I looked through some old granny recipes but they'd all been updated without notes so I don't know what the original ingredients were.

I haven't done a thorough study of the inclusion of water, but it does seem to be the norm for current recipes. Or milk in a dairy recipe.

The only requirement for challah ingredients is that they be the best you have, and that's probably a requirement of tradition rather than law. Oh, and that the flour be one of the five grains (wheat, barley, spelt, oat, rye). That's law. There are some other picky rules that the people who are really into rules put on it in order to have the correct formulations for their extrapolations of what's required, but most Jews haven't even heard of them, let alone follow them. (I never heard of some until I looked in the back of one of my books today.)

The oldest American reference that I was able to find was for the lady who did butter or beef tallow. The rest I've found are all from or adapted to post-WWII.

A big question is how cakelike or bready you want your challah, and how much shortening that implies. There are differences between solid shortening and oil in baking, but if the amount is small enough compared to the flour it doesn't matter much. But that's another whole story. :)

Correcting what I said above: The sponge does have water in it.

Christine, I have to thank you for starting me on all this research. I found a book that I'd misplaced a long time ago which is about Jewish bread baking. That's the one that had the different Shabbat breads from around the world (still "challah" if they do the separation ritual, but easier to distinguish from a raised egg bread by saying "Shabbat bread"). I've decided that over the Summer, if I don't have other pressing issues, I'm going to try to bake my way through some of it. There's also a Jerusalem flatbread with hyssop I want to try in another book, and some interesting looking things in the Aleppo book. I did a lot of web research too, but it didn't yield so many must try recipes. :)

By the way, for at least a hundred years before the period we're talking about, before home ranges with ovens and commercial olive oil and shortening production, the way challah was mostly made was by the village baker. Throughout most of Europe, the area of the Ashkenazie Jews, the standard thing was to take the bean pot to the bakery on Friday afternoon, have the baker put it in the big oven with the banked fire, and take home the freshly baked challah. On the way back from Saturday morning services, stop by the bakery and pick up the bean pot (full of cholent which slow cooked overnight) to have a hot meal for Shabbat midday. The crockpot was invented by a man who wanted to make overnight cholent. Some women did at home, then as now, and in some places the wasn't a baker but there was a communal baking oven, and the women would bring their loafs to bake and leave their bean pots.

I hope Callie enjoys your efforts to give her a taste of what the girls in her favorite books liked.

"Actually, the word "challah" doesn't mean bread, dough, or any of the other words that seem to describe the aromatic loaves. The root of the word is chol which means ordinary or secular."

I would call that 'nothingness' in meditation. Meaning 'without words'. Connecting the earth and the soul. A soul does not need food. Your body needs nourishment, bread and water, that feeds the soul. Many religions use the same basic connection to the earth and what it provides.

Why we garden, grow healthy food, bake bread. Make healthy choices in simple less processed ingredients.

"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."

Normally i would walk across the street and ask my neighbor what her recipe is. She keeps a kosher kitchen. I'm a minority in my NY neighborhood.

What is important is your connection with your adorable Callie. Learning along with her and sharing a bond. And, no doubt, having to answer many questions. : ) And answered a few questions of my own.

Many people think vegetable oil is from a vegetable. A good plant oil makes sense to me.

Oh, here is a good read that might answer a few questions and where i quoted from...http://www.aish.com/sh/t/rai/48970616.html

The word "challa" does not mean separation. In the expression "hafrashat challa", "hafrasha" is "separation" or more accurately "allocation": simply taking a cut for a specific purpose.

Truth is the origin of the word "challa" is unknown. There are some suppositions as to the origin, but no certainty.

We need Jessica in on this discussion.

"The mitzvah of challah is one mitzvah with two parts: (1) separating the required dough (Hafrashat challah), (2) giving the dough to a Kohen"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dough_offering

The act of separating is what you do with the challa, and not the challa itself.

In other words, part of the dough - the challa to be so to speak - is separated - allocated to a Kohen.

Interesting! What we're taught, and what's in the books, is that "challah" means separation, and the part you burn is called the "challah" as well. I never looked in a dictionary. That didn't gibe with the most credible origin I know of the word, so I should have. The blessing doesn't distinguish challah from other bread. :)

As you say, no one knows for sure. Going by earliest recorded mentions, the word comes from the same era as the European braided bread, berches (which is what some Germanic Jews call challah), which is named for the Germanic goddess Berchta. Apparently, pagan women used to give their hair to the goddess, which evolved into giving the braided loaf. An older name for the goddess is Holla. I've read something about the rabbis objecting to something which made Holla the preferred name. The inference that "challah" was an Hebraicization is quite reasonable. From there, the rabbis would have developed a more Jewish version of the word and meaning.

Of course, I was gobsmacked when I learned about all this considering how anti-pagan Judaism is!

I'd think there's a pretty small window, as these things go, for a pagan Germanic influence. Or maybe the name was picked up from gentile Germans' bread long after they ceased to be pagans. Luckily, Netscape has sent me my next discs, which are just by chance Simon Schama's History of the Jews! I don't know if he talks about challah but I'm pretty sure he'll be helpful.

The Germanic areas were becoming Christian by the sixth century. Pagan customs remained in most of Europe well into the eighteenth century, and perhaps later, especially among the peasantry They might have nominally been called Christians, and shown up in church on Sundays, but they'd still plant (can't find a source for the details) X by the light of the moon, wash their faces in the dew on the equinox, etc. According to Aish, challah is first cited in the 15th c. with berches going back well before that.

There are lots of things in Jewish history to make a little girl less enamored of it. A lot of it is terrifying! I hope you enjoy the discs, but maybe pre-screen anything you might want to share with her.

Interesting....my son's mother in law, who's mother came here from Russia pronounces it "Holly"....no ch sound at all....and her mother did too. maybe it's just a familial thing....or not.

Back to your original question, Christine, I've just received a copy of Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking. It doesn't say anything new about challah, though it attributes the adoption of the braided celebration bread as from the Christians in the Middle Ages, leaving out that whole part about the pagans starting it. :)

The recipes adapted from bakeries, however, all use "vegetable oil". I can't find any references for which oil. It's probably the cheapest, kosher oil.

I've been searching the blogosphere for answers. Found many oil recipes there, most of them using olive oil. Some are looking for the olivey taste. Others are using Light olive oil, which is what I saute with. It doesn't have many of the dark green solids that make EVOO special. That makes the flavor pretty neutral and raises the smoke point. The highly touted "health benefits", however, are in the dark green solids. That might be something to try.

It also describes the combinations of man and machine that it took to churn out the challot. Very cool. :)

challa "חלה" appears in the Book of Numbers chapter 15 verse 20. Here are verses 17-20:

יז וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. יח דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם: בְּבֹאֲכֶם, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מֵבִיא אֶתְכֶם, שָׁמָּה. יט וְהָיָה, בַּאֲכָלְכֶם מִלֶּחֶם הָאָרֶץ--תָּרִימוּ תְרוּמָה, לַיהוָה. כ רֵאשִׁית, עֲרִסֹתֵכֶם--חַלָּה, תָּרִימוּ תְרוּמָה: כִּתְרוּמַת גֹּרֶן, כֵּן תָּרִימוּ אֹתָהּ. כא מֵרֵאשִׁית, עֲרִסֹתֵיכֶם, תִּתְּנוּ לַיהוָה, תְּרוּמָה--לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם.

http://kodesh.snunit.k12.il/i/t/t0415.htm#20

Here's a translation from Bible Gateway:

17 The Lord said to Moses, 18 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land to which I am taking you 19 and you eat the food of the land, present a portion as an offering to the Lord. 20 Present a loaf from the first of your ground meal and present it as an offering from the threshing floor.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+15

Ah, so the word applies more generally, not just to the European yeast-raised bread. So do Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews make a very different bread also called challah?
I saw Lowspark reappear on another thread. Maybe she will comment here.

I too hope some people with more definitive knowledge will post. Jews have always gotten around, and where previously isolated Jewish settlements were cut off from the general Jewish world, the Ashkenazi rabbis would go in and convert the whole community, and catch them up on the latest rabbinical thought, so there's a ton of cultural mixing. My own family, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, straddled the Baltic states and the Holy Land (which I believe was under Ottoman rule at the time), a foot in each, and has both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi tradtions all tangled up. Germanic braided challah could easily have been disseminated all over.

My book about Syrian Jewish cooking talks about setting the Sabbath dinner table with 12 loaves of khubz 'adi, a flatbread, corresponding to the twelve loaves "that were displayed in the Jewish Temple". I think that refers to the actual temple in Jerusalem. This is a flatbread traidtionally baked in a clay oven called a taboon...have a crisp exterior and a soft, pillowy interior pocket. Following discussion of variations baked with za'atar and sesame is a sidebar about taking challah (the ritual). A recipe for Savory Anise-Seed Rings follows. [http://www.amazon.com/Aromas-Aleppo-Legendary-Cuisine-Syrian/dp/0060888180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433809064&sr=8-1&keywords=aromas+of+aleppo]

In A Blessing of Bread (cover blurb: The many rich traditions of Jewish bread baking around the world ), the book I had lost (btw, these are mostly oil recipes), there are a whole bunch of recipes for challah in an Ashkenazi section. In the introduction to the Sephardic section it says: The term challah is used only occasionally for the Sabbath loaves; most often the Ladino word pan or the local name for bread, such as pita, is employed.

In the North African section, the intro says: In Arabic-speaking areas, breads are called chubz or another Judeo-Arabic variant. In Ethiopia, flat injera is the daily bread, and a large whole wheat round called bereketei is served for the Sabbath. There is no special term such as challah for Sabbath loaves.

The Near-East section introduction talks about the whys and wherefores of flatbreads and their distribution along the silk road with no mention of challah. There are recipes for Yemenite Sabbath breads: One is called Kubana (steam baked in its own vapor all night). (Interestingly, margarine is their fat of choice now that they can get it in Israel, which is the same story I'd always heard about challah in the U.S.) Another is Chubzeh, which is an Arabic word for bread. Noon Shabbati is a Persian Sabbath flatbread.

This is only one book, so this isn't a complete answer. To the best of my own knowledge, the ritual of taking challah belongs to all communities, but the specific rich braided loaf called "challah" is an Ashkenazai tradition.

http://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Bread-Traditions-Jewish-Baking/dp/1579652107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433809488&sr=8-1&keywords=blessing+of+bread

I wish I had the time and water to bake my way through this book!

"Water enough"?

Took me a minute. :) I think you're asking why I don't have the water to bake? We're well into a severe drought and when I make new recipes I tend to make messes and use a lot of stuff that needs washing. For daily bread, I have it down to one measuring bowl for rising which can go in the dishwasher, the bowl from the scale which often only needs dusting, a dough whisk and a bowl scraper. It bakes on parchment. Just a wipe with the sponge where a little flour has spilled, a quick rinse to loosen stuck on dough, and a couple of handwashings. Even so, I've been buying a lot more bread which conserves by economies of scale (i.e., in general, a bakery will use significantly less water per loaf).

I see. I was puzzled and my first thought was more like "she's in a Mars simulation and there is no water."

Isn't a reference to the specific verse in the Bible - plus the original text in Hebrew - where the word challa "חלה" appears definitive enough?

Should i start praying to the Germanic goddess Brechta for this point to register?

Well, we have more water than Mars! But if you look at pictures of our reservoirs and lakes, you could doubt it. ;)

Is it definitive enough? Not completely. If you take the traditional religious view and only look within the traditional and rabbinical texts, then one would say, yes, that is the origin of the word as it is used in the American language.

If you consider the scholarship outside of the texts (which is the tradition in my family over many generations--reverence for the texts as well as scholarly looks outside of them), given that for all our people have lost of our records over the centuries, we have a remarkable legacy of writings, and can date pretty well when and where the word "challah" first came into use for Shabbat bread, specifically the braid, then no. One can imagine that the Jewish women wanted to serve this lovely bread to their families for Shabbat, and rather than forbidding it, the rabbis codified it, imbued it with Jewish meaning, and decided it was challah with a ח, referring to the text, not Holla with a ה, since we don't recognize pagan gods. That has always been the way when cultures brush up against each other. Learning this has been a treasure for me. Instead of the challah being just one more thing we do, it makes a connection with a specific group and their generations before them, and I think it's very cool.

As to Linda's daughter-in-law's family, I'm guessing "Holly", which is often heard, especially among older people, is a diminutive or a matter of phonetic drift rather than a reference to the goddess.

If as you claim the rabbis okayed the Holla by deciding it could serve the same function as challa with ח - namely that its shape was no impediment to serving as challa with ח - the implication is that challa with ח was there already. What was okayed was a change in form/texture/ whatever to the veteran challa. Your own argument indicated that Holla cannot be the origin of challa.

That's not what I meant. I didn't mean that Holla was the origin of the word challah that is about giving the portion to the kohanim, or performing the ritual. I meant it was the origin of calling the braided loaf challah. Both things can be true at once: It can come from both the German and Torah. There are other possible ways it could have happened. They could have heard "Holla" and decided it was "challah" on the spot, understanding it through their own language and culture. They could have had a big fuss over whether the bread from the outside culture were kosher enough and decided that it was a fine thing given from our G-d, and it was the Germans who mistook the name. It could be that the rabbis said that berches could only be made kosher by the taking of challah, which sounded like the Holla name for Brechta, which worked for the bakers. There are all kinds of possibilities, and it could be that there are many that happened in different locations and coalesced through communication between communities. I don't know if there are any known transcripts or letters describing that process, but I doubt it because I think it would be too delightful to quash. One reference I found said that there was a rabbinical preference for the name Holla over Brechta--which one can imagine might have been that it sounded so much like challah. The kicker is that there are still people, according to the books, in the U.S., and likely elsewhere, who call it berches.

"can date pretty well when and where the word "challah" first came into use for Shabbat bread"
When would that be?

As for the braid, I wonder how much anyone, Christian or Jew, would connect it with a remote pagan origin. I wish we knew exactly what tine we are talking about.
This is all fascinating. Thanks so much for the research!

So, I decided to create my own interpretation.

The Challah.

The traditional making of challah bread doesn’t know what to do with the awkward beginning and the end of the braids, so they are tucked under the loaf and hidden from view.

I feel that is contradictory to one of the symbolism of challah, which is “The wholeness of the universe”

I decided the beginning and the end of the braids should not be treated as imperfections and hidden, and they don’t have to be ugly looking. The six points also echoes the six points of the Star of David.

Twelve humps from the braids recall the miracle of the 12 loaves for the 12 tribes of Israel. Round loaves, where there is no beginning and no end to symbolize continuity.

I know, this may not make any sense.

dcarch

Dcarch, that's beautiful! I love the raw picture where the ends look like octopus fingers. :) Your interpretation makes as much sense as any other.

Christine, I've found several sources which all date it to the fifteenth century. That would be first known written artifact, so it would almost certainly have been in common use well before then. The pagan ritual of the braided breads as a substitute for the hair offerings extends well back from that (at least a century), but none of the sources I found had any more specific mention of dates for that.

I certainly didn't know any of this before I started researching 20th C. challah for you (just trying to find out what All-of-a-Kind Family's mother would have used). The first mention I found was in a blog musing on what non-Jews are doing with challah, and I kind of laughed it off. Then I found a couple of different sources, with more information for the same thing, and spoke to someone I know who has an academic interest in this stuff who also confirmed it, and continued the research from there. If you go looking for it specifically, there's lots of information out there.