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Re: Whole-Wheat Challah

"Mike Avery" <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com>
Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:23:06 -0700
v104.n009.9
"Barrie J. Lax" <barlax@synapse.net> wrote:

>Maggie Glezer wrote a recipe: Slow Rise Whole-Wheat Challah
>
>Whole wheat Challa is one of those things that doesn't or shouldn't exist. 
>Challa was always made out of the finest white flour, not whole Wheat, rye 
>or anything else. Why call it a challa ? It's like making Chocolate bagels 
>(I saw those recently). I just don't accept calling something something it 
>isn't!
>
>Dat's it, dat's what, dat's all (as we Quebecois say).

Always is a pretty long time.  If you look at the food timeline at 
http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food.html you'll see that Challah dates 
back to about 70 A.D.  I suspect that even the finest white flour from that 
era would have considerably higher ash content than today's white 
flour.  All in all, I have trouble ruling out whole wheat flour in making 
Challah.  It could be a return to an original version of the recipe.

Mike
-- 
Mike Avery
MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com