The Joy of Handmade Bread

Tonight, just a small thought that's been kicking around in my head since last Friday night's Shabbat dinner: the joy of handmade bread. Let me explain. For the last several months, we have had a "subscription" to our synagogue's challah baking program: a group of people who get together every Thursday to bake challahs (both for subscribers and for giveaway to congregants in need). They call it the "Mitzvah Kitchen". (I really want to find a way to be involved in that group at some point--but that's another story.)

Now every Shabbat, instead of buying a store-made challah (which are perfectly delicious, consistently light and fluffy and yummy), we have a hand-made challah. They're really different--still delicious, but heavier, denser, and somehow more real. I can taste all the ingredients more clearly, the flour and the egg and the salt. Some weeks the challah is better than others--a better balance of ingredients, cooked just the right amount of time, or shaped in a better braid. But what I really enjoy is that every time, it tastes handmade. I don't know how else to describe it. Eating it, I can feel that someone put love and effort and the work of their hands into it. I don't feel that way about the store bought challah (I don't even know if it's made by person or by machine). And feeling that, tasting that, makes it easier to be grateful, to actually feel the blessing in my mouth and my memory that bread should be. Eating is praying. Cool!