I’m fascinated when tradition gets tested by modern science and comes out standing.  I’d cheered when acupuncture was shown to be effective for chronic pain.  Now, I’ve learned that America’s Test Kitchen, which publishes Cook’s Illustrated, has subjected challah to its test kitchen experimentation.  The results: pretty much what you’d learned from your mother and grandmother (or would, if you had one).

The best tasting challah is not too sweet, not too dense, not too fluffy and not from the commercial bakeries.  Their results, from the Holiday Baking 2009 issue, included:

I’m sure that like me, many of you cannot get Hanukah cooking and baking out of your minds!  I will be making potato leek latkes, homemade apple sauce and some chewy ginger cookies tonight.  As you can tell, I’m in full holiday mode!  Anyway, if you are looking for a break from the holiday food maddness I have a great recipe for you!

My birthday was about a month and a half ago.  As much as I enjoy eating out I really wanted to cook my birthday dinner at home with my boyfriend this year.  We decided our main course would be homemade pizza – something neither of us had ever made.  I had heard it was very easy to make but having never made any type of yeast-based bread, I was a bit nervous!

I looked into a few recipes and ended up using one based on a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers.  I will say that this recipe didn’t make quite enough dough for me.  I think next time I will try this recipe.  The most fun thing about making your own pizza is that you can put anything you want on it (and it can be as healthy or unhealthy as you’d like)!  We were especially proud of our pizzas since the vast majority of the ingredients were local and organic.  I hope you enjoy making your own pizza.  Feel free to leave comments with your favorite topping combination!

This is a tale of two cities, each with a venerable Jewish culinary legacy that claims boasting rights to the world’s best bagel. Until now, these parallel universes have existed at a safe distance. But Mile End – a new Quebecois-style restaurant opening next month in Brooklyn - will bring the long-standing New York/Montreal bagel standoff to a head. In preparation, I consulted the experts about which “roll with a hole” steals their hearts, and their stomachs.

Read what they said below – and for more on Mile End, check out my article in Edible Brooklyn.

Have an old bread machine hanging around? Want the taste of challah without the effort? I’ve made this delicious egg bread from a recipe in this cookbook. It’s delicious for sandwiches, french toast, regular toast, and dunked into soup.

Thanks to Rabbi Dara Frimmer, of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles,  for sharing this sermon with us. Each of the four clergy gave a mini-sermon on a place in the house (”home” is their theme this year) and Dara says “not surprisingly I chose the kitchen.” This piece, Dara says, was in part inspired by her work on the Hazon Food Conference executive committee and the work she’s been doing to create a healthier and more sustainable world for all. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own kitchen memories below.

To participate in the sustainable food movement today is to live on the edge of irony. Especially if you’re taking part in the movement from a seriously urban setting like, say, Washington, D.C.

What do I mean by this? Just look at this summer. Over the past few months, I’ve taken digital pictures of my hands covered in garden soil, emailed for advice on thinning carrots, Googled rustic local farms, and watched a documentary about real food from a plastic seat in an air conditioned theater.

It’s not just me. Recently, more and more small farms, local food organizations, and gardeners have set up blogs or created Facebook groups.

Remember back in the day when you told someone you ate mostly vegetables and organic food and they told you they only ate food that tasted good? You’d ask them what wasn’t good about the organic food they’d tasted, and usually they’d describe some sort of hard, seedy, lumpy thing. They’d use the word “brick”.  They’d mime chewing like a mouth on novacain. I’m sorry to tell you, but they’d probably been eating bread at my house.

Here’s what happened: I decided maybe seven years ago that I was going to learn how to make bread, except I didn’t really understand why you would spend all that time shoving it around on a table and punching it  if you didn’t have to. Luckily, there was the Cuban bread recipe in a copy of the New York Times cookbook. That no-knead, no-nonsense bread was an excellent gateway drug, but it was also kind of flat; and when you make it with whole wheat or spelt, it ends up looking sort of like a large, good-smelling cow pie.

This blog is not the right place for it, but still, Roger Cohen has really gotten on my nerves over the last year or so.  His ranting about how wonderful Iran is and how great it is for the Jews there made me question my devotion to the New York Times.  His  piece “Advantage France,” in Sunday’s paper, about some of the differences between the French diet and the American diet, may have me beginning to change my mind.  I’ve only spent a few days in France, and only in Paris, but I’m guessing he’s exaggerating somewhat.  Nevertheless, the idea of Americans adopting any diet (or lifestyle, really) that required not only combining the ingredients and cooking them, but processing them to begin with (filleting the fish, making the pasta, etc) does sound beautiful and absurd.  The idea of connecting to food on a “gut” level and a geographic one far predates the terroir of which Cohen writes, at least in Jewish tradition.

“Half a loaf,” they say, “is better than none.”  But it’s hard for me to cheer when I have half a challah left after Shabbat, doomed to sit on the counter, uneaten until it’s inedible, or tossed into the back of a freezer and forgotten until the pre-Passover clean up and then burned with the chametz.

We’ve been trying especially hard, recently, not to waste food – but when it comes to leftover challah, the challenge is twofold: For one thing, there are four people in my family and 15 slices in the average bakery loaf; you do the math. For another, halakha (Jewish law) requires that two full, un-sliced loaves appear at both the Friday night meal and again on Saturday as a reminder of the double portion of manna that fell from heaven before Shabbat when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. A lovely tradition – but it means the bread left over from supper can’t just be used up at the next day’s lunch.

That’s just one of the many reasons I bake my own challah: I can shape each loaf to the exact size I’ll actually need on a given Shabbat, depending on whether we’re expecting guests. And when I’m too tired/hot/lazy/cranky to bake, I now buy small challah rolls at the bakery, rather than full braids. Yeah, the little round breads look kind of lonely on the big challah board, but honestly, one slice of challah is really enough for each of us.

But even those anti-waste measures aren’t fail-safe – and there are many folks, I know, for whom it just isn’t Shabbos dinner without large, glossy loaves poking their noses out from under a silken challah cover. For all of us, then, I’ve been thinking about delicious ways to use up leftover challah.

Exhibit on the History and Evolution of Wheat at growseed.org

The Heritage Wheat Conservancy is restoring the almost lost heritage wheats of the Old World and colonial New England.  After years of collecting rare wheats with traditional farmers in remote European and Middle Eastern villages, Eli Rogosa hosted a field day for researchers, flour companies and organic farmers last Thursday in Massachusetts.  96 varieties of delicious rare world wheat on the verge of extinction are thriving at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Organic Research Farm.World heritage wheats, once the staple food of the western world, are on the verge of extinction. Modern wheats are bred for uniformity, and dwarfed so they don’t fall over under the intensive agrochemicals of industrial farms and for convenient harvest height.  However, modern wheats are lower in nutrition and flavor, and are not well suited to organic soils due to their stubby roots and short stalks.

According to Eli Rogosa, Founder of the Conservancy, “The best way to preserve the delicious ancient wheats are to market them to today’s discerning artisan bakers and gourmet chefs who seek the highest quality, nutrient-rich foods.”

Bagels. They’re delicious with butter and jam, as a vehicle for an egg sandwich, topped with cream cheese and lox, or filled with tuna or hummus. I love a good, fresh bagel for breakfast or lunch, so when traveling, I’m sure to check out the best options.

This is the first of a three part series. Click here to learn how to win her new book There Shall Be No Needy.

I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion (along with Nigel Savage of Hazon and Nell Geiser of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice) following the June 10 performance of Give Us Bread, a new play about the 1917 New York food riots, which were largely led by Jewish immigrant women.

Wartime food prices had reached levels that few families could afford, and thousands of women throughout New York took to the streets in protest. These women knocked over and set fire to pushcarts, while the police struggled to gain control of the crowd. The New York Times reported that, during a community meeting, “a woman appeared in the meeting room, followed by five little children, and forced her way to the speakers’ platform. She cried out that her husband earned but $8 a week as a tailor’s helper and that she was unable to buy enough food for her babies.” (“Pushcarts Burned in Riots over Food,” Feb. 20, 1917)

Don’t forget, the Jew and the Carrot is running a raffle for FREE tickets to see Give Us Bread.  Just send us your favorite bread recipe at contest@jcarrot.org (please cite the source of the recipe as we will publish the contest winner) to be entered into a raffle for two free tickets to select shows of Give Us Bread, a new play that tells the remarkable stories of immigrant women during the 1917 food riots in New York City.

All entries must be recieved by Sunday May 31 (winner will be announced the following day)  The performances are June 5-21, 2009, at the Milagro Theater at CSV (107 Suffolk Street) New York, NY.

Food prices shot up overnight.  Starvation threatened families from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to the Lower East Side to the Bronx.  The city did nothing.  A group of women came together to demand action.  Boycotts accelerated into riots.

The year was 1917.

America has provided the chance for freedom and new life to the immigrants of Orchard Street in New York City.  Yet fear moves through the community as food prices begin to rise. When it becomes impossible for a group of “everyday housewives” to feed their families, they must unite, because standing together, no matter how terrified you are, is more important than suffering alone. Using original text and source materials, Give Us Bread tells the remarkable stories of immigrant women, who provide a lens with which to examine today.

And the Jew and the Carrot readers have to opportunity to win FREE tickets to the show!