five-strand braided challah

the love of the plait and its sweaty beginnings ::::

 

I found one of my favorite breads when I was 17 years old. It started with a braid. How fancy,  I thought, just like a real bakery.  I learned how to braid challah from the most self-absorbed chef I have ever met. He loved a good pizza and to talk about himself. I figured he knew his bread if he knew how to make pizza dough. Jim was from New Jersey, somewhat itinerant, finding work in odd places for variable time frames. It was in Maine that I met Jim, when I was covered in flour and butter in the un-air-conditioned back kitchen of a restaurant. Every day, we worked steadily on creating Linzer Tortes, zucchini bread, mini Boston Cream Pies, strawberries soaked in champagne, and gallons of chocolate mousse. Rather, he showed me once and let me create solo, he tearing his sweaty apron off of his sweaty thin white t-shirt, hiking up his pants before they lingered sweaty crack-ward, and walking home midday.

 

 

The challah was different. Jim took the helm on this creation, nurturing it, keeping the flour-covered assistant away until the last minute so he could call it his own and take the credit. Besides the taste, the one thing that I like most about this bread is the braiding technique. I didn’t find this five-strand method mentioned anywhere else until recently when I perused other challah recipes. The challah Jim first made that summer was for a wedding held at the restaurant’s sister inn, wedding cake also created in the kitchen, but by the mousy, egotistical head chef and his sometimes flame, a bright-eyed, tanned, and overly friendly woman. By the end of the event, I wanted to just go home, tired after the plummet of adrenaline from the wedding reception’s preparation. All I wanted was to take some challah home, eat it quietly sitting on the couch, Naomi Wolf’s book in hand.

 

 

But I didn’t. No challah for the restaurant staff. No pat on the back for the teenage lackey helping in the kitchen, getting paid minimum wage for a job someone from culinary school should have had. So I made my own. And it was better than Jim’s. Prettier, tastier, and a lot less sweaty.