Beth Ricanati

**.5

This is a weird book, and it did not work at all for me. It's part autobiography, part religious meditation, and part cookbook*. The author is a doctor, and reminds the reader many times that she went to an Ivy League university and worked at some of the country's best hospitals and is very good at doctoring. It's the sort of thing a proud Jewish mother would glowingly write about their daughter, but comes off a bit braggy in the first person.

As with many people who were raised in a show more mostly secular environment and rediscovered their Jewish roots as an adult, she is amazed by the depth and meaningfulness of the religious traditions, rites, and rituals. People already familiar with Judaism will learn nothing from these sections, and it's hard for me to tell how they would resonate with a non-Jewish reader who doesn't have the first clue of what she's even talking about. She also makes some basic errors, such as confusing prayer (tefillah) with blessing (bracha). The two are closely related, but have distinct meanings in Jewish liturgy.

The theme that ties it all together is the weekly baking of Challah, the traditional egg bread that is eaten on Erev Shabbat (Friday evening) as a vital part of the Shabbat meal. She provides her recipe, and splits it up into small sections that are spread out throughout the book, accompanied by anecdotes, analogies, and various other musings.

*The problem with the cookbook component is that the author is not an experienced baker, and admits that this one recipe is in fact literally the only bread she has ever baked! She doesn't understand how bulk fermentation and proofing differ, and might not even recognize those terms [not that knowledge of the theory or the terminology necessarily means better bread]. She doesn't weigh her ingredients (she did buy a digital scale but refused to even try it a single time), doesn't seem to understand that there is a difference in kneading a dough to medium or full gluten development, wouldn't know the difference between active and instant yeast if it bit her on the leg, etc. In other words, this is not a good primer to learn how to bake bread, or about the process of how bread is made, or even how to bake her specific Challah recipe. She relates that it took her years to figure out how to turn out a halfway decent loaf by ignorance-driven trial and error, and while even a mediocre homemade freshly baked Challah is still usually a marvelous thing, this isn't the best book for beginners looking to learn how to do it themselves. show less