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Month: January, 2007

January 18, 2007

red triumphant

like a recalcitrant boy in the corner, my amaryllis it did nothing. day after day–nothing. not a sprout or a shoot or a peep.

nothing.

so much so that at one point i thought it a dud. a firecracker without fizzle. i’m not one to chuck things, but this baby was nudging me in a corner.

tucked in the loamy soils the day after thanksgiving, it sat idle straight through advent. i had done what it wanted: gave it light. gave it space. even replaced the cheap green plastic pot that it came with, with a sporty red aluminum bucket. what more could an amaryllis want?

apparently, time.

‘bout the third week into this non-adventure, when i had decided its sole purpose in life was to take up a chunk of my corner, place holding forever, i put in a call to the bulb lady; you’ve met her before here, jennifer brennan, my life coach on all things dug in the ground.

well, says jennifer, laughing, “amaryllis, i’ve said for years, are kind of like teenage boys.

“it’s gonna grow when it wants to, and the only thing it’s going to please is itself.

“might be christmas, or valentine’s day, or easter. no way to know.”

hmmm, i said, eyeing my adolescent boy with the green tip popping out of the pot.

okay, then, so i’ll wait.

considered blaring some tunes. but then figured the ones that i’d pick would be so out of date, the poor thing would stay hunkered in soils just to spite me.

so i went on with my life. cast ever-so-casual a glance off to the corner. but not too often, and only when the teenage bulb was not looking.

and then, well after christmas, somewhere around epiphany, appropriately enough, the ol’ boy decided to stretch. must have been getting out of bed sometime in the mid-afternoon. like my own 13-year-old only dreams of being able to do.

it stretched and it stretched, inspiring hope, hinting at joy. if i waited. if i did little but sprinkle the occasional few drops of water.

and then, oh my lord, what had been one stalk turned into two. and what had been one amaryllis-in-the-making on one of those stalks turned into two, too. do the math, and it looks like we might be in for a three-ring circus.

yesterday, all day, it was like watching the teenager suddenly decide there was someplace to go. every time i turned around that red trumpet was blaring a few extra notes.

and then, when i walked in the door after the ol’ car had died and my key ring exploded all over the parking lot, losing a key in the process, i shot a glance in the corner and my heart did a dance.

just when i needed it most, the ol’ boy he was blaring. mouth wide. tonsils dangling. if he’d been a sick teenage boy, i could have swabbed the germs right out of his lungs, he was so open wide.

i stood there and marveled. he had moved when he wanted to, all right, but somehow–in that magical, mysterious way of the world–his moving came just when i needed it most.

his sidekicks, they’re opening as i type. by nightfall i could have three teenage boys out there, all carrying on wildly. all carrying on, red.

and i, as their long-awaiting mama, could not be more tickled. they are, in the end, red triumphant, oh so triumphantly red.

anyone out there waiting and waiting for triumph, triumph in any color? anyone with a tale of life unfolding on a time table all of its own?

2 Comments
January 16, 2007

behold the pomegranate

we interrupt our regular programming to bring you this flash from the fruit stand: the pomegranate is fleeting. it’s on its way out. it’s days they are waning. counting down, less than two weeks to go.

by the rise of the next full moon, the red leathery orb will be gone for the season, will be gone ‘til the next harvest moon.

so while it’s here in our midst let us ponder the pomegranate, seeded wonder, fruit you must work to get into.

if ever there was a fruit that deserved to be pegged “the enchanted,” this would be it. the pomegranate. literally, “apple of many grains,” aka seeds.

oh, the seeds. 613, if you believe the torah. or, pretty close if you count. i know someone who counted. and lived to tell about it.

yes, it’s the fruit that i hold in my palms as if i am holding a treasure. and i am, really. have you ever peeled back the leathery, red purse-skin? popped out the shimmering gems? brushed back the blood bath of pomegranate splattering all over your counter, all over your chest, all over everywhere and beyond?

by the time you are done popping your pomegranate, you need a bath. and you look like you need a good defense attorney.

in the beginning, it was a fruit of persian persuasion. trekked to the himalayas. rested a spell in armenia. shriveled-up fruits, three-millennia-old, prove that last archeological morsel.

back to the bible, we are told the israelites, those wandering jews who dashed out of egypt with nothing but their unleavened bread, so missed the fruit, that ol’ moses himself had to assure them they would once again meet up with it in the promised land (deuteronomy 8:8).

and let us not overlook the legend of persephone, daughter of demeter, goddess of fruit and fertility. the pomegranate takes a star turn in this tale. seems hades snatched poor persephone into the underworld. demeter protesting her daughter’s potential demise, shut down all fruit bearing on the planet. persephone, pouting, vowed not to eat until she got out of hell. well, she let slip six pomegranate seeds between her lips, down her throat, into her belly. further punishing the punished, persephone paid dearly for swallowing those six seeds; she was forced to return to the underworld for six months out of every year. each time she went down, her mama shut off all fruits. thus, the seasons of summer and winter were born.

all thanks to the red leathery fruit with the seeds that prove too laborious to many.

ah, but to the dogged, the seeds are worth pursuing.

my own personal pomegranate intrigue started when i learned from a lubavitch woman, a supremely orthodox soul preparing her rosh hashanah feast for herself and her 13 children, that the pomegranate was prime, for it held in its belly one seed for every mitzvah, or each of the 613 commandments, in the torah.

since then i indulge every year, september through january. popping those blood-red seed pearls is a bit of a shock in the pre-dawn light. and yes, i have splatters on half my white shirts. but to sit down to a plate sprinkled with gems is to feel pulled back to ancient persia.

i heard a trick for seeding that saves the blood bath. dunk pomegranate in deep bowl of water. run thumb through thicket of seeds. they plunk out into the bath; so does the crimsony juice. yup, it’s clean all right, but i give it thumbs down: the seeds to me are lacking their deep ruby shine, their taste is too watered-down.

i’ll take my pomegranates, along with their original sin.

here are just two ways to use them, both simply sublime. both from my friend susan f., who cooks like a jazz singer. toss her a note, and she takes off, climbs the scales, scats all around. oh, and she too has trekked the himalayas, so she comes by the pomegranate naturally.

for a simple repast, she casts ruby red seeds atop a mound of thick creamy yogurt. preferably the whole-milk variety, the kind with the thick creamy crust you must dive through with your spoon to get to the vanilla-y middle.

i swear i had a beef stew with pomegranate at her fine dinner table. but she says she has not a recipe. she imagines one though. and it goes like this:

she imagines “one with your hunk of meat, trimmed of course, cut into perfect bite size cubes, brown meat in a skillet with a little olive oil, don’t cook all the way….then toss into dutch oven with chopped celery, those beautiful pearl onions, bay leave, thyme, dashes of cumin, red wine and pomegranate juice, cover and bake for awhile, after half done add the pomegranate seeds and chopped walnuts, serve with rice and sauteed green beans. ok?” she asks, wrapping it up.

oh, so very ok.

behold the pomegranate, people. behold the fruit that makes it hard to get into. but is totally worth the price of admission.

please, please share your pomegranate secrets and passions…in just days we’ll have nothing but their blood-red stains, refusing to go. then we can talk about outsmarting the splatters, unless of course you have the cure for that this very day…

4 Comments
January 16, 2007

little legs under the covers

some time in the thick of the darkness, those little legs climbed into our bed. he was sneezing, he told us, in his own bed. too much cat curled on his covers.

he was warm. he was soft. he was tender.

all night his sweet little self rolled up against me. we draped over each other, limb over limb, arm around middle.

it is like incubating all through the night. it is, i pray, seeping the best of us into each other.

my little boy, by day, can be, um, a bit of a handful. he’s the youngest by far of anyone around. so he makes up for it with whatever plot he can imagine. we want a dinner conversation. he takes to under the table. we say turn off the tv. he darts down to the basement where he thinks we’ve forgotten there’s yet another tiny screen lurking.

but, by night, the boy is a cuddler. the boy is soft. the boy is utterly tender.

he said something in his sleep last night. something about God. i haven’t a clue of the rest of the story. but i know for a moment he was talking to God.

as i lay there beside him, drinking in the tender side of the boy, of the night, i marveled at how it was that he knew that this particular night, more than many, i needed the gift of the boy with the legs under the covers.

there won’t be many more nights when our bed is his refuge. little legs get big, forget the way in the dark into the room with the extra-thick covers.

but for now, there’s a boy, there’s a bed, there’s a mother. and she is softer this morning for the long night with the soft roll beside her.

5 Comments
January 14, 2007

in his words…

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

“I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

“I have a dream today.”

–martin luther king, jr., august 28, 1963

2 Comments
January 12, 2007

national oatmeal season

the fine folks who tell us these things, tell us that this is national oatmeal month. they are wrong.

at our house, the oatmeal barrel gets hauled out once the leaves start crisping and swirling to the ground. doesn’t get put away ’til the easter grass is pushing through the softening earth. oatmeal is a way of life. it is, by all accounts over here, a good life.

we are fully aware that in some corners of the planet, perhaps just down the block, the word oatmeal is met with hands crossed over mouth, and heads ducking for cover. apparently, it is an old porridge. an ancient porridge. goes all the way back to the ancient chinese in 7000 b.c.e. not too long after, relatively speaking, the greeks were gobbling it for gruel. they were the first, the history books tell us, to do so.

oats came to america, the story goes, when a sea captain planted a crop on one of the islands off massachusetts, somewhere around 1602.

then, along about 1877, true modernity practically, the man we know and love, the quaker oat man, showed his shining face. that man, a pottery rendition thereof, now sits on the shelf, looking down on my stove. he is pretty much my kitchen buddha. i don’t leave him offerings, but i do bow down before him. and i always say, if we had a fire, my oat man i’d grab. see, my papa, once an ad man, gave me the oat man. and every time i’ve moved, the oat man gets layers and layers of tissue and newsprint, lest he lose a nose or a tip of his tri-cornered cap in the transfer.

but back to the bowl that will soon be set before those who i love.

if this is national oatmeal month, there is a reason beyond the pure promotionality. oatmeal in your belly fuels you right through ’til pb&j-time.

but for me, it’s all in the making. i stand there at my cookstove, pouring my oats and my milk. then i start doctoring. i would no sooner spoon up plain oats and milk than i would pour orange juice on cheerios.

no, i add things. as if i am tossing in jewels. i have a whole row of dried fruits in glass jars, fruits the color of amethyst, ruby, garnet and onyx. every day it’s a new rendition: chunks of dried apricot, a sprinkle of cranberry. if it’s not for the boy who hates nuts, almonds land in the mix. i’m not afraid of wheat germ, consider its power, so that too gets stirred in the brew.

it is as if i am arming my boys for the dragons they’ll slay. the more i toss in the mix, the more certain they’ll conquer the day.

it is a mother’s amulet, almost. oatmeal as shield for the dangers that lurk.

that is rather a lot, the power i put in the oats, steamed, rolled and cut. but as i stand there concocting i’m some sort of sorceress. me and my oats and my shriveled-up fruits.

brown sugar on top, a small moat of milk. they sink spoon into mound. once the bowl reappears, specks of oatmeal no more, they are set, they can soar.

as they bound out the door, i toss a glance to my ol’ quaker friend. he is winking, i swear. we’ve done it again.

2 Comments
January 11, 2007

h + 2 ohhhhs

that would be water, people. the subject is water. water, specifically, for the birds.

oh no, they moan. she’s at it again. the bird lady is flapping her wings. she’s squawking, she is. she’s going round and round like a broken bird record.

now, now, good people. calm down in your nests. this won’t be a lecture. more like a soft little nudge of the gentlest elbow. it’s just that the news is so stunningly good. and so stunningly simple.

for years i have heard my bird-loving mama cajole and remind, put out the water. well, you know how things go when your mother reminds. you forget. you get busy. you don’t do what she says.

but my bird buddy, that tim joyce fellow i told you about. the one i am talking to for my birdscaping story.

well, he said, ‘put out the water.’ and somehow i listened. actually, barbara the wiser (aka my mother) gets due credit here.

see, at the fancy bird shop they sell all sorts of gizmos for giving your birds plain old tap water. and the pricetags for these thingies? they start at $49.99 and go skyward from there.

well, ol’ barbara the wiser she never met a gizmo she thought that she needed. so she rummaged around, down in the basement, in the garage, and she came up with a banged-up plastic plant saucer that would do just the trick.

years back i had put down the cash for one of those water heater-upper coils; the problem was, since we moved here four years ago i wasn’t sure if i’d seen the darn coiled thing.

presto, it was, believe it or not, in the logical place, right there in the garage, nestled with other bird things, next to the garden things.

so, my mama, she plugged it in. just plain old tap water, the coil, the saucer.

and what to our wondering eyes did appear?

listen up, people, this is the good part: birds by the dozens, birds by the flock.

it is as if some magic elixir was out there in the saucer. some bird cocktail that’s got them all chirping. yo, they are warbling, one to the other, there’s water on maple. take a dive, take a drink. or some bird flutter like that.

so the moral of this little tale is no more than this: if you want the birds, put out the water.

more essential than seed. cheaper, by far. all you need is a tap and a spigot, a saucer, and a means to keep it from turning into a big block of ice.

certainly, you could pop for one of those coily gizmos. i haven’t seen one for less than $49.99. or, try one of these, nearly for free:

barbara the wiser heats up a kettle of boiling water and pours it atop the ice that’s formed overnight.

the fine folk at the cornell lab of ornithology, about the smartest bird folk in the land, suggest putting an ordinary lightbulb into a flower pot, and then setting the saucer of water on top of the pot. the bulb, plugged in and turned on, mind you, will put off enough heat to keep your bird bar ice-free and fluid.

a few other watery bird things you might want to know: the no. 1 reason a bird needs its water, is not simply for drinking but rather for bathing. yes, it’s true. a bird stays warm under its feathers. but for optimum fluffing, the feathers need to be clean. a bird with clean feathers is a bird who is cozy and warm. a bird in need of a bath is a bird who can’t fluff his feathers.

finally, you might love this little bit, a bird as it breathes exhales moisture with each little breath. i don’t yet know how many breaths a bird has per minute. but i’m hot on the trail of that little bird fact. for now, just know, that your bird it needs water. you do not want dehydrated birds tipping and flopping all over your world.

more to come. for now, class dismissed….

2 Comments
January 10, 2007

chop, saute, edit…

it is delicious, the way the day unfolds when i weave back and forth from cutting board to keyboard, in my slow dance toward dinner.

2 c. onion, chopped.

one story cobbled, edited.

1 sweet red pepper, seeded, chopped.

one phone call, dialed.

i am a writer who works from home. i am a mother who needs to feed children. i am also a woman who savors the adagio toward dinner.

as the january chill slipped in through the cracks and the crevices of this old house some time yesterday morn, and as i realized dinner would eventually be upon us, i walked into the pantry and starting eyeing the shelves.

black beans, i saw. grabbed for the bag. ticked through the means toward the simmering end, a bold steaming soup; beans the color of midnight, hot-sausage-studded.

and so the rhythm began: onions and garlic, chopped and sauteed. beans set to simmering. two phone calls made. story re-read, cut by 200 words.

there is something that soothes me, inhaling the onions, the garlic, the simmering beans. all the while tending to stories and editors and sources not yet discovered. knowing that dinner is coming the slow way. not something rushed in the 15 minutes before everyone crawls to the table, famished and grumpy and harried.

it is the blessing of working from home, stirring with one hand, typing with the other. it is rare, and i know it, to be home alone with the smells and the sizzles and the sentences growing.

i have given up much, not being in the newsroom. but i cannot imagine not being here where most everything matters. it’s my own cockamamie invention, the place where domesticity meets deadline. and i love every drop. (except for when i’m pulling my hair out.)

perhaps it’s the post-winterbreak quiet that, this week, is so particularly sweet, now that the big yellow bus rumbles down the lane and swallows up my littlest boy.

but what it really seems is that the broth of my life is richer, is deeper, when i’m here on the homefront doing two things at once. and doing one of them slowly.

as the sweet scent of the beans and the cumin rise from the pot and curl under my nose, i feel less like a mad scrambled mama, more like a soul who is blessedly tending my flock.

be it a soup or a stew or a fat roasting hen, there is a certain elixir in the kitchen perfume as it comes ’round the corner to me and my keyboard.

maybe it’s nothing so much as the sweet simple knowing that, while tracking down editors, i am aiming toward dinner, that most sacred time when we all come together.

more than deadlines and drafts one, two and three, it’s that time towards the end of the day that most deepens my soul. and when it unspools not in a rush, not in staccato, i am soothed, i am stoked by the slow dance to dinner.

3 Comments
January 9, 2007

christmas tree leftovers

near where i live, they are lining the streets. dumped by the curb. unceremoniously hauled out and left to shiver in the finally-arriving cold.

they are the fallen soldiers of christmas. they are the once-proud trees, stripped, humbled, strewn.

all their trappings, packed and stashed back in the attic, the basement, the closet that holds way too much.

not so many weeks ago, it seemed every car, suv, minivan had one strapped to the roof like some botanical five-point buck, grown, felled, strung up by the limbs, just so we could carry home christmas.

for awhile there we flirted with the poor thing. made all nicey-nice. left cookies down by the stump one star-studded night. draped it with shimmery stuff. turned on the lights. might even have remembered to give it a drink.

then it got old. we loosened our affections. the calendar changed. we declared: time to dump.

and so, all around me, and maybe around you, they’ve been dumping. like a forest of the unloved, they are askew at the curbs all over the place.

not at my house.

we are proudly, defiantly, giving them life ever after. they stand, the big one listing west, the little one leaning to the east, out in the back where we keep an eye on their doings. they are there for the birds, for the critters who crawl deep inside them.

now the interesting thing about leftover trees is that you don’t have to have had a tree in the first place to go out and, er, simply adopt one. if you’re supremely polite you might knock on a door, ask, hey do you mind if i borrow your tree? the look might be quizzical, but i doubt they’ll say no.

come on, who’s going to turn down a kook who wants to haul home a dry tree?

take a stand. or a coffee can of sand. (remember when the coffee you drank came in cans? yes, it still does.) or just lean it jauntily against something else.

if you want to go for the st. francis of assisi supergold medal, you might refer to that long-ago meandering (“for the birds,” 12.22.06), and make yourself and your birds some peanut-butter-and-birdseed hearts. or dangle some suet muffins. or string cranberries and popcorn.

then watch the birds have at it. watch the tree come back to life. if you listen, you might even hear it humming. some ol’ resurrection tune, perhaps.

there are worse ways to savor your leftovers.

and at my house, they’re welcome to stay ’til the last little needle drops to the ground. then i’ll grind it up and make mulch of it. which, come to think of it, doesn’t sound very nice.

vote here if you think this is all for the birds.

5 Comments
January 8, 2007

sunday night calm, monday morning alarm

sometimes i almost hear a voice in my head, nudging me, reminding me, i am the mother, it’s my job to interlace calm into our midst.

sometimes you have to turn out the lights to do that.

last night i turned out the lights.

i hollered up the stairs. said it was mandatory. be in front of the fire. in pajamas. 9 o’clock on the dot.

then i got to work, simply. lit the fire. put out the crumbles of christmas cookies on a fine plate. piled clementines into what has become the clementine basket. grabbed a marvelous book, a book on the birth, life and death of words, “the life of language,” it’s called. and then headed up to slip on my own red-and-white stripes.

this is not, not until now, our usual sunday night rhythm. hmm, i can think of science projects rushing toward deadline. and whole volumes of books being downed at indigestible speeds. i can think sunday night and think jitters and fuming and pulling out hairs.

so i turned out the lights.

there is something powerful about coming together in a darkened room, with only the glow from the crackling logs. the same effect could be gained from coming together ’round a circle of candles.

it’s the flame, i tell you, that holds the power. the flame at the center and the dark all around. it’s beyond ancient. it’s primal.
but injected into the everyday, injected into a 100-watt world, it is wholly absorbing.

and this particular sunday, the sunday that holds back the floodtide that comes rushing in once the backpacks are out and the school days return, well, we needed flames leaping from logs. we needed to gather. one more time in a circle. to push back the oncoming crunch.

we talked about words. we broke open orange peels. we drank in the dark and the light and the quiet.

someone decided this should be every sunday. so, for now, it’s a plan. we’ll see if it sticks. like so many great good ideas, sometimes the world gets in the way.

the world, yes, the world…

so this morning, at 6, the alarm it did ring. back to the world, the real world, it shouted. i was up, i was ready. i was splashing my face. but i noticed no sounds from the room where the brand-new replacement alarm, the one set to rouse the slumbering teen, was supposed to be ringing. uh oh. strike one.

rousing him from his blankets, i leapt down the stairs. even snipped dill for the top of his lox. called up the stairs every few minutes. the carpool was coming; he needed to eat. the orange juice was waiting. the vitamins, too.

but before i saw the tops of his shoes, the headlights beamed to the curb. the carpool was here. the boy, he was not. strike two.

i dashed out to do some curb-dancing. begged for a minute. noted that they were, um, 10 minutes early.

tossed lox and black bread at boy on the run.

then, as i gently closed the front door behind him, my sweet loving husband shared one little secret: the bus pass, the one that i’d bought and tucked on his desktop, it was lost, it was missing. that’s why the boy was so slow coming down. he had left, it now seems, without a way to get home.

strike three. i am out.

so much for the calm of the logs in the fire.

would someone please turn out the lights?

4 Comments
January 4, 2007

baking with henry

it is friday, a friday. it will soon be shabbat. it is time for baking with henry. henry and i bake challah together. henry is my teacher.

henry lives downtown. in a tall black building.

i live in a leafy little town 12 miles north. in a stone-and-shingle, two-story house.

we bake over the phone.

henry is jewish. i am catholic.

henry is a grandfather; he talks about growing up in germany, before the nazis erupted. every friday night, he tells me, stewed chicken or brisket main-staged the meal; the challah, his mother’s opening act.

challah, the braided egg bread that is the sustenance of shabbat, the sacred canyon of time stretching from sundown friday to sundown on saturday, marking, each week, the seventh-day rest at the end of God’s original creation.

i am a mother, a wife, married to a fine jewish man. we have two boys, growing up jewish and catholic. together, we lift up shabbat, wrap up our harried work week with the pause and the majesty of blessing bread, blessing time, at our table.

i have, over the years, made shabbat mine. i sink into the rhythms of friday, sink into the rhythms of unfolding shabbat. i slow cook on fridays. i pick and choose from the book shelf, finding a passage worth reading, a thought worth shabbat. i put out the candles. i bring out the wine. i reach for the yarmulkes, or little skull caps.

and, after years of wishing i could, i now bake for shabbat.

henry is sifting through my lumps, leavening my learning. henry is teaching me challah.

he came to me in an email, with story attached.

last year, typing away on a 10-year anniversary book for our synagogue, i culled recipes for a few trademark foods. the rabbi’s brisket. his wife’s gefilte fish. henry’s challah.

with recipe in hand, i decided i had no excuse not to roll up my sleeves and insert fist into flour. i did what henry had written. thoroughly blended all dry ingredients; added oil, eggs, water. kneaded for 5, then for 10, finally upward of 15 minutes, in search of the elusive dough state, “moist and elastic.”

it was then that i made my first call to henry.

add water, just one little drib at a time, he advised.

i followed orders.

place dough in warm spot to rise. about 1 hour, he had written.

two hours later, accidentally out longer than planned, i came home to dough that had let out its air.

i put in a second call to henry.

that night, we broke bread but it was more like we were breaking a flat-shelled turtle. this was challah without the rise. this was challah gone flat.

henry called the next morning. he was with me now, and wanted the word on what in the end had come out of the oven.
and so it went, week after week.

i progressed. sort of a reptilian progression. one week a turtle, the next week an alligator. it would be weeks before the soft twisted mounds looked anything like the challah in the bakery windows.

and then my kitchen was demolished. so all baking stopped. but it is a new year, and a new kitchen.

so henry and i begin baking again.

the flour is measured and dumped. the yeast, quick-rising, mixed in. i know how to knead. i know that one hour’s rise, not two, and not three, is essential.

best of all, i know henry’s number, even in florida.

stay tuned for the reptilian report.

all right, all you bakers. anyone willing to go on record with a tried-and-true challah tale? pictures to come, if you promise not to laugh…

Henry’s Berches Challah Recipe
_
_ Makes 1loaf
_
_ 1 Pkg Instant Yeast*
_ 3 cups Unbleached Flour
_ 1 TBS Sugar
_ 2 tspn Salt
_ 5 oz. +/- Warm water
_ 1 TBS Vegetable Oil
1 Egg white (save yolk for egg wash)
* simplifies and speeds baking

_
_ Toppings
_ To taste: Poppy seed, Sesame seed, Kosher salt, etc.
_
_ Thoroughly blend all dry ingredients in a large mixing
bowl. Add oil, egg whites, and water. Mix thoroughly using
an electric mixer with paddle attachment (or hands) until
dough forms. Get dough as smooth as possible in mixer.

Remove from bowl and knead a bit more by hand until silky smooth. If
dough sticks to hands, add a bit more flour; if dough is too dry,
add a little more oil for elasticity. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes.
Dough should be moist and elastic.
_
_ Place dough in oiled, covered bowl, in a warm spot, to rise.
_ About 1 hour. Gently deflate dough and divide into 3 lots.
Roll each lot into a rope, about 10 inches log, and braid to form the finished loaf.

Place on lightly oiled baking sheet for a
second rise, (or use a parchment paper lined sheet, which makes for less clean up) until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees
_
_ Brush loaf with beaten egg yolk (beat yolk with 1 tspn water),
paint top and sides of loaves, and sprinkle with
_ favorite topping: poppy seed, sesame seed, kosher salt etc.

_ Place in oven until browning begins. Lower temperature to
350 degrees and continue baking until golden brown and
loaves sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. It is best, though, to use an instant read thermometer and bake to 190 degrees internal.

If loaf brown too quickly during baking, tent with aluminum foil.

Baking time about 30 minutes. Cool on rack.

after i struggled with this version, henry sent a tutorial, titled, “challah, one step at a time.” i’ll send–or post later–if you, too, need henry over your shoulder.

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