Friday is challah day
Challah is the braided egg bread served at the Sabbath meal on Friday night. It is enriched with eggs, oil and a little sugar or honey, then brushed with egg wash for a deep, shiny crust. Bakeries sell it plain, with sesame or poppy seeds, with raisins, or in whole wheat versions, and many bake their biggest batches on Thursday night and Friday morning. For Rosh Hashanah, the braid becomes a round spiral, symbolizing the cycle of the year, and often includes raisins or a honey glaze. Day-old challah is prized for French toast.
The rye counter
Jewish rye is a lighter, wheat-heavy rye with a sour tang, usually studded with caraway (seeded) or left plain (unseeded), and baked with a cornmeal-dusted bottom. Corn rye is a denser, sourer loaf from the same tradition, and pumpernickel is darker. Good bakeries slice rye to order. It is the bread behind pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, but it is just as good toasted with butter.
Also look for bialys, flat rolls with a depressed center filled with onion and poppy seed. Unlike bagels, they are baked without boiling, so the crumb is softer.
Pastries and cookies
- Babka: a rich yeast cake rolled and twisted with chocolate or cinnamon. Look for many thin swirls and a moist, not dry, crumb.
- Rugelach: crescent cookies rolled around jam, nuts, chocolate or cinnamon sugar. American versions usually use cream cheese dough; Israeli bakeries often use a yeasted dough.
- Black-and-white cookies: large, soft, cake-like cookies frosted half vanilla and half chocolate.
- Mandelbrot: twice-baked almond cookies, related to biscotti.
- Hamantaschen: triangular cookies with poppy seed, prune or apricot filling, made for Purim.
The holiday calendar
Jewish bakeries plan their year around the holidays. Round challah and honey cake mark Rosh Hashanah in September or October. Hanukkah brings sufganiyot, jelly doughnuts fried in oil. Purim in late winter means hamantaschen by the dozen. During Passover, leavened bread is forbidden, so some bakeries close, while others switch to coconut macaroons, flourless chocolate cakes and sponge cakes made with matzo cake meal. Order holiday items several days ahead.
Many Jewish bakeries today also reflect newer waves of immigration. Israeli-style shops sell flaky burekas filled with cheese, potato or spinach, yeasted rugelach glossy with syrup, and Jerusalem bagels, the long, oval sesame rings sold by street vendors in Israel. Sephardic and Mizrahi bakers add date-filled cookies and semolina cakes. The classic Ashkenazi case is still the core, but the range is wider than it was a generation ago.
