Braided Challah with Poppy Seeds and Lemon

Braided Challah with Poppy Seeds and Lemon

In that the bread offering is one of the few biblical rites for Shavuot, a special emphasis is placed on the making and eating of challah. Usually, each family prepares two loaves. Here's an excellent recipe to start the meal off on the right foot.

• 2 packages dried yeast
• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ cup lukewarm water
• ½ tsp. saffron
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 2 cups warm milk
• 5 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 4 tsp. poppy seeds
• 1 tsp. lemon juice

Combine the yeast, 2 tsp. of sugar, water, and saffron. Let stand 5–7 minutes.
Mix the eggs, oil, and milk in a large bowl. Slowly stir in the yeast mixture. Sift the flour, add salt, and combine with other ingredients in bowl. Knead on a floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes or so. Grease a separate large bowl, and place the dough inside, working it so that it is covered with a thin, oily glaze all over. Cover with a towel, set in a warm place, and let rise for 1 hour, or until about doubled in bulk.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Turn the dough onto a floured board and divide it into three equal parts. Punch down and knead again. Using extra flour on your hands, roll the dough into six strips of even length. Braid 2 sets of 3 braids together (for 2 loaves) and place them on separate greased baking sheets. Brush the loaves with a bit of egg yolk and sprinkle with poppy seeds and ½ tsp. lemon juice each.
Bake for 30–35 minutes or until lightly browned. (Each loaf should sound hollow when tapped.) Cool on wire racks.
For a little variety, you can add cinnamon or dried cranberries (or both) to the egg/milk mixture when making the dough. It's really quite good.

Ruth 2:14-16
14 At mealtime Boaz said to Ruth, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.” When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over.
15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her.
16 “Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don't rebuke her.”


Ruth was invited by Boaz for a noontime meal.  She was to partake of the reapers lunch shows that it was very unique since Boaz was a Jew and Ruth was considered a gentile.  Jews did not usually sit down to eat with gentiles or women.

Ruth was told to dip her bread in wine vinegar (in Hebrew, chomets), a sour concoction often made from unripe grapes, which commentators tell us was a typical reapers' repast. (Bread [in Hebrew, lechem], as used here, is a broad term, meaning not only some grain product, but food in general [sustenance], whatever form it might take.) Boaz also offered her roasted grain (the KJV says “parched corn,” though corn as we know it did not exist in the Middle East at that time).
Again, we learn a useful tidbit here about the cooking preparations of the biblical era. According to author Daniel Cutler, “raw ears of grain could be made more palatable by roasting or “parching” them.”

The heat also breaks down the starches and makes the cereal more digestible. Parching was accomplished in two ways. One was simply to hold the stalks in a flame for a few moments. This was an especially convenient meal in the fields and probably constituted the lunch Ruth and Boaz shared during the barley harvest.⁴

From Cooking with the Bible