Challah baking

This afternoon, Rebbetzin Tspora Dahan from the JSSC invited students to her house to bake challah. I am thoroughly exhausted, and there were seven of us working on it! I can't imagine how the rebbetzin--or anyone else, for that matter--does it alone. Granted, we did a double batch, but in order to do the challah blessing you need 2kgs of flour worth of dough. That's a lot of challah. That's a whole lot of challah.

We made challah at Brandeis once, but it was interesting to do it in an Orthodox setting. We learned about sifting the flour, checking the eggs for blood, putting the raisins in water so that any bugs float to the top, and of course the challah blessing. This is all stuff we didn't do at Brandeis. Oh, the complexities of religious life...

I made two round challot with cinnamon sugar on top for a sweet new year. One will probably be my breakfast over Rosh Hashanah, and the other will go to my Rosh Hashanah meal hosts.