Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish new year, is a holiday with traditions like skipping synagogue, saying “Shana Tova” to everyone, and pretending to know what “Shana Tova” means. For a people so inventive, I hate to admit that the Hebrews really phoned in the culinary traditions on this one either due to a lack of materials or creativity. One such tradition is eating apples and honey to ring in a sweet new year. You know apples, the fruits that we eat the other 364 days of the year? Well get this, we eat them on Rosh Hashanah too. But not just any old non-holiday apples, we dip them in honey to make it seem like the apple we ate on Rosh Hashanah is different from the apple we ate the day before.

The other traditional food, and the subject of today’s DannyMakes, is round challah. You know challah, the traditional jewish bread that many people make the other 51 weeks of the year? Well get this, we also make challah on Rosh Hashanah. But instead of a long, braided log, we take the same dough and shape it into a circle because a circle represents a year or something. Like an 8th grader scrambling to throw together a science fair project at the last minute, we take everyday foods, make the most subtle change imaginable, and call it a breakthrough.

The recipe I used was from Delish (link here), which gave pretty simple and straightforward instructions. In the Rosh Hashanah the spirit of making slight changes, I made this a raisin challah. But I nearly botched the whole operation when I forgot to add the additional egg yolks to the mix. So I had to mix three egg yolks into an already-kneaded ball of dough. After cursing at myself for a few minutes, I was able to work the dough back to a usable state with no further consequences besides ten lost minutes and additional forearm and triceps fatigue. The extra egg yolks were necessary, as the dough ball now had the signature golden color of challah.

After proofing, it was time to cut, roll, and braid. The braiding instructions were very unclear, so I did my best. The beauty of cooking and baking is that everything usually looks good if you pretend to know what you’re doing. I made the initial lattice using six strands, folded each strand over a nearby strand until there was no dough left to braid, and tucked the ugly ends under the rest of the dough mass. Once you get confused, just go with what feels right, and it’ll turn out fine.

Next was time for the egg wash and bake. The egg wash was just one beaten egg, but if I were to do this again, I may add some water to the egg wash and cut the baking time by a few minutes. The crust was a little overdone and dry for my liking, but the challah turned out well and made for great toast and french toast the following days. Maybe in the future I will rate these foods or I will give myself a performance rating, but not this time. Here is the final product:

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