Thanks Len for the recipe!

My baking is way down (sort of) because my boys are gone.

I'm baking more for other people. I've been making chocolate chip cookies lately for mostly other people (I always keep some at home). I'm using brown butter, toasted sugar, and brown sugar. Kate took a batch to Ireland when she went to visit Henry, our middle.

I have to make a bunch of challah this week. Our rabbis want to teach people to make challah. They've asked people to volunteer to make a double batch so I said I would do that. They also want people to bring in samples of their challahs with the recipe so I volunteered to do that as well.

It should all come together next Sunday. The plan is to give people pre-made dough to braid and then have them make their own dough while the braided dough rises. Then they'll send people home with the dough they braided and the dough they made but no actual bread. I'm trying to keep quiet because they asked me to do this. I said yes and then they kept telling me I didn't know what I was talking about so I said they should do it without me. I'm hoping for the best.

I also have scones and cookies to make!

Thanks everyone. I hardly consider myself an expert. There are so many people who know so much more than I do. But I do use the temple kitchen once or twice a month to make 15 1lb loaves of bread so I know more than both our rabbis.

Mike and Len are right, this is ill advised but it's not my show and even when I was "leading" it the rabbis were going to do what they wanted to do.

They will go home with one or two braided loaves (the original plan was two) and a lump of dough that needs to rise.

Of course I am not sure how they will get the dough to braid. There is some number of volunteers bringing in enough dough to make two or four loaves that has been rising in the refrigerator some amount of time. I am delivering my dough at 8:45 in a disposable container. I'll use a turkey roasting bag as that is what I use to raise dough. Religious school begins at 9 and there is a 15-20 minute service. So between 8:45 and 9:30 we'll need to:

cut and pre-shape the dough.

Then the dough will need to rest and relax so people can roll it into ropes and braid it.

Then after we've braided it we're going to let it rise while someone walks us through mixing bread dough.

I am not clear if we're going to egg wash it at temple and I am not clear how we'll transport it back to our houses. I have bus tubs and roasting bags so my daughter and I will be okay. Not sure what others are going to do and no one has given me, as a dad participating in this with his daughter, any thing up front about what is happening.

Maybe I over plan but this is not the way I would do it. But they did not want to do it my way. I am doing what I can to support it.

I am hoping for the best.

Today I made 3 blueberry braids, each about 16" long. The filling was lightly sweetened cream cheese and lemon oil, topped with frozen blueberries. They are delicious, and two are now in the freezer.

Yum to blueberry bread!

I made dough on Tuesday for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I'll bake them next week.

Aaron's challah experience reminded me of a pastor at a church I attended before moving here. He built an important sermon point around his idea of barley bread as "the bread of the poor," in a sermon on the New Testament story. (I think it was the feeding of the 5000.) I told him he was incorrect because "barley" is listed as one of the wonderful attributes of the promised land in the older scriptures. He was basing his argument on the white bread vs. whole grain breads of the Medieval and later periods.

At that church, people baked bread for communion. He decided that we should experiment with all kinds of bread, including cornbread. At that point, I suggested that he could vacuum up the crumbs, of which there would be many.

I was a member of Altar Guild, and I did bake a nice wholegrain bread that held together well when it was my turn. However, I ended up resigning when the woman who was in charge of Altar Guild decided we had to move to unleavened bread during Lent using her recipe. (I'm not sure if the pastor was behind this decision or not, as he never mentioned it.)

When I told the story to a Jewish friend, also a baker, she laughed, as she had a Catholic friend who had resigned from her Altar Guild due to a similarly controlling head. My Jewish friend got out of her temple's Latke brigade during Hanukah due to the dominating woman who headed up the endeavor.

My friend did stay in the knitting group, however, in spite of the criticism of a woman about my friend, who knitted in the European manner. That woman could only grumble and had no power to force compliance.

I'm not sure what it is that brings out the would-be dictator in some people when it comes to the internal groups in a place of worship.