One tradition that you may want to incorporate in your Sabbath is challah, a simple braided egg bread. If you have a bread machine, baking challah is incredibly simple.
Add ingredients to the bread pan in the order given:
- 1 cup warm milk
- 3 T soft butter
- 1 t salt
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 3 1/4 cups unbleached flour (preferably local or organic)
- 2 T sugar
- 2 t active dry yeast
Set the bread maker for dough. (If you don’t have a bread maker, mix and knead ingredients thorougly by hand or with the dough hook of a stand mixer. Place the dough in a clean, greased bowl, cover it with a towel, and let it rise in a warm place for one hour.) After the first rising, divide the dough into six equal portions and roll into strands. Loosely braid three strands on a greased cookie sheet. Repeat with the second three strands. Cover dough with a towel and allow it to rise in a warm place for about an hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake for thirty minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped.
Adapted from Go Green, Save Green: a simple guide to saving time, money, and God’s green earth (Tyndale 2009)
