Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
On the Bread Trail serves up explorations of heritage Jewish breads. Puffy yeast doughs, as expansive and mysterious as the survival of the Jewish people, mix with Jewish celebrations to yield surprising and diverse treats for all seasons. Feed your family and friends from the spirit and creativity of our ancestors through their migrations and adaptations when you dig into these diverse bread stories. It will include several historical and contemporary global recipes.
The book had its start as the chocolatebabkaproject, a search for the best chocolate babka. Along the way I found that many cultures enjoy similar yeasty, celebratory treats with shared sources or ancestry, what I have started calling “cognate bread cakes.” These special occasion, often egg-rich loaves reflect a diversity that is at once distinct and also universal. In non-Jewish traditions they might include korovai, kulich, pandora, panettone, and more. In a Jewish setting, they extend beyond my family’s Ashkenazi (Central European)-centered menu to include Sabbath and holiday breads from Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
I have prepared and dipped happily into Shabbat breads such as Moroccan khobz, Ethiopian dabo, along with Yemenite saluf and lachuch. It has been fun decorating an Ethiopian special occasion pan-bread called ambusha, a shlissel or key challah for the Sabbath following Passover, and an elaborate 7 heaven (Los Siete Cielos) challah of Salonica for Shavuot. Oh, the scent of fenugreek, coriander, orange zest, and other spices waft from my oven, the fluff of warm bread in my mouth. I had underestimated the comfort of that multi-sensory blanket enfolding me.
In a Joseph Campbell sense these are heroic foods, voyagers through time and space, from home to home, from generation to generation, victoriously returning to festive tables season after season.
Recent Posts
-
Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews
You may wonder: how did chocolate help define American Jews? Through chocolate, we see that Jews were part of America since its earliest days. Well, since 1701 at least, Jews in the Colonies made part of their living through chocolate. Several Sephardim, leaders of their New York and Newport Jewish and secular communities, participated in
Read more › -
How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
Read more › -
A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
I’m grateful for this story written by Rachel Ringer, published at JTA/NY Jewish Week on December 20, 2023: (New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked
Read more › -
Exhibit Opens! Sweet Treat! Chocolate & the Making of American Jews
Sweet Treat is a delicious gastronomic adventure into the history and resilience of American Jewish chocolate making. This exhibition invites you to follow the chocolate trail to America, a scrumptious journey through time and place. Chocolate gives us a lens to understand Jewish migration, as the chocolate trade parallels the migrations of the Jewish
Read more ›
Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Chocolate Chip Politics
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- Injera*
- Israeli Chocolate Spread
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
- Why Is Challah On My Matzah Box?
7 thoughts on “Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail”