Rabbi’s Wife’s Challah

“Look at that beautiful brioche,” I overheard a guest saying at a Bat Mitzvah in Geneva. The brioche was the glistening round challah made by Nicole Garai, the rabbi’s wife. During the service at the hidden Quai du Seujet Synagogue, located near the Rhône River, Nicole helps her husband by escorting assigned readers to the bima (platform). The Garais, French Jews, came to Switzerland to start this synagogue in the 1980s. Nicole told me that she bakes challah for people of whom she is fond, like her congregant, Juliette Laurent, braiding it in a round to signify the circle of life for Rosh Hodesh (the first of the month); she also makes it for the new year, and for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I especially liked the way she decorated the challah, by first liberally sprinkling a thick band of sesame seeds, then poppy seeds all over the top of the bread. Another trick she uses is to brush the bread twice: once at the beginning of the second rise, after the bread is braided, and again just before she pops it into a cold oven. The procedure of turning on the heat after the bread is in the oven must date back a long time, at least to the beginning of home wood ovens.