[Sca-cooks] "Actual bread?" WAS gingerbrede

Judith Epstein judith at ipstenu.org
Fri Sep 18 04:39:46 PDT 2009


On Sep 17, 2009, at 8:59 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 17:16:33 -0500, Judith Epstein wrote:
>
>> I'm used to calling anything with the "extra" ingredients (anything  
>> besides water, yeast, salt, and a flour made of one of the Five  
>> Grains -- wheat, oats, barley, spelt, or rye)... cake. Or, rather,  
>> anything but those four ingredients will take a blessing other than  
>> the blessing-over-bread in Jewish practice.
>>
> So the traditional Shabbat bread for the Ashkenazim, challah, over  
> which the blessing for bread has been made for a few centuries, you  
> consider to be cake?
> -- 
> Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
> the persona formerly known as Anahita

By Ashkenazim, the practice is that if flour is involved as a certain  
percentage of the ingredients (by weight? volume? I'm not sure!), and  
if it was baked versus steamed or fried, it qualifies as bread, so you  
can do the ritual hand washing for bread, make the blessing for bread,  
and then do the full post-meal blessing. I'm actually a bit unclear as  
to how you judge the percentage of flour versus other ingredients,  
when you're not the one who baked the item (like if you bought it at a  
store, where they do list the ingredients but don't list the  
percentages), but anyway, that's the practice. This means that, among  
many other varieties of breads (or "breads"), matzah can be used to  
make the blessing over bread at any time.

By Sephardim, the practice is that only the four basic ingredients can  
be involved, and the substance must be baked, in order for it to  
qualify as "motzi," meaning bread. So Ashkenazi challah would be  
considered cake. We do have what's commonly called water challah,  
which is only made with the four ingredients, and is made specifically  
for Sephardim to be able to make the blessing over bread. Personally,  
I prefer using pita for my bread at the Sabbath table. To me, challah  
is what you use to make French toast on Sunday mornings. Mmm, French  
challah toast. Anyway, though, there's another qualification for  
bread: we don't make the bread blessing over matzah except during  
Passover, when it is the only bread we may eat. The rest of the year,  
we consider matzah to be "m'zonot," meaning "sustenance," which is the  
blessing over cake, cookies, tortilla wraps, crackers, and so on. Why?  
Because even when it's not Passover, matzah is made without yeast, so  
it's made of the basic three ingredients instead of the basic four!  
Yeah, it's nitpicky. ;)

Judith / no SCA name yet



More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list