Challah Bread

Using Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice I made a recipe of Challah bread yesterday for our fellowship gathering today. I should’ve taken picture of it, but I put it off, and now – it’s all gone. Funny how that happens. But it was really good, and looked really pretty (I made a 3-strand braided loaf), and I’ll have to try it again – maybe with milk instead of water next time to try for a softer crumb.\’c3\’82\’c2\~ It’s so nice that it’s been cooler the last couple of days so that I could do some more baking!\par
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We had a fellowship meeting here today. Our church is having meetings on the third Sunday of each month where people are assigned to local church member’s houses for a gathering after church that is not a prayer meeting, just a fellowship time. It replaced the prayermeetings of yesteryear with a new format in the hopes of increasing the glutinous structure of the church… er… too much bread baking. Anyway, the fellowship hall at church is all torn up because they’re installing soundproofing materials in the ceiling, so everybody had their normal agape meal at the fellowship houses instead. This is what I made the challah bread for. Our group was small – only two other families, one of them smaller than ours, but I liked that – it made it a much cosier gathering than usual. Plus, I actually got to talk to pretty much everybody there and the boys were able to run around without there being a thicket of legs to navigate through\’c3\’82\’c2\~and trip up! Plus they liked playing with Baby Jack, the only other child there. In fact, one of Judah’s prayer requests tonight was that Baby Jack would not fall down the stairs!\par
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Actually, having the meeting at our house was so nice, I found myself wishing that we could replace the church meal with smaller gatherings like that once a month, just for variety, and so that one could actually have conversations at church without worrying about where the children are or what can they do with themselves. Of course, when your kids are older, it’s not a problem, but whenever you have a baby you’re back to square one again, and Lord Willing, it will be years before we don’t have small children. Oh well… nothing lasts forever, and once something’s over, you get all nostalgic about it anyway!