Speaking of Challah

When I was young, we had homemade challah every Friday night. It was not baked in my home, but in the home of my grandfather's aunt (my great, great aunt) Gitel.

Gitel was a small old woman, who wore hear hair (actually a wig) under a hair net, and spoke with a heavy Yiddish accent. So heavy, that you never really knew what she was saying, but you didn't care, because it probably wasn't very important and, besides, her role was to create the Friday night challah, not to discuss the news of the day.

She lived with her husband David (pronounced 'Doovid', and known as Fetter Duvid) and her daughter Myrtle and Myrtle's husband Oscar, who owned the Happy Hollow Liquor Store, which even as a five year old I knew was a ridiculous name for a store.

The challah (which I can still taste) was 50% flour and 50% sugar, with a few eggs thrown in for good measure. There used to be arguments as to whether challah was a type of bread, or a type of cake. Those who knew Gitel's challah would always take the cake side.

My father would pick the bread up for the entire family on Friday evening on his way home form work (Gitel lived only about two blocks from us). In addition to the large loaf that our family got, I (and every other under-13 year old male in the family) got my own small private loaf. [This was a clear tradition for Gitel. Whether or not, other young Jewish boys got their own private challah, I do not (and did not ever) know; this was not a subject of general discussion.]

After Gitel died and the bread stopped coming, my mind goes blank as to what would happen on Friday nights. I think we may have stopped having challah, and that we may have switched to Sunday morning bagels instead.

In St. Louis, the white flour pastry and bread capital of the world, this would be an easy switch. Bagels were so plentiful they grew on trees. So did challahs, but they tasted a lot like Uptown Bakeries' challas. Who wanted that?