Holiday breads
To brighten your Christmas and Hanukkah at home
If the Great Yeast Shortage of 2020 taught us anything, it is that bread-baking adds meaning to our lives. At a time when our hands needed something to do besides wring with worry, we took to sourdough baking like bees to honey. We had the time, we wanted a distraction, and we needed to feed our families. So we cranked up the oven — in a heat wave-ridden summer no less. Now, as temperatures drop and holiday traditions shift, it makes sense more than ever to bake and break bread with loved ones. Whether you’re craving savory, decorated challah rolls, Swedish cardamom bread or statuesque, fruit-studded panettone, these simple holiday recipes from Bay Area bread experts will add depth and deliciousness to your pandemic-era celebrations. Almost everyone who grew up in a Jewish home has a challah story to tell, whether it was the portion of dough you learned to set aside as a symbolic offering to the poor or the chocolate chips you snuck into your loaf at camp. During Shabbat meals growing up in Jerusalem, Aliza Grayevsky Somekh always sat next to her mother, who would say the blessing over the challah and proceed to eat the bulbous brown crust pieces while making piles of the sweet and fluffy insides for her daughter. “It’s this unspoken thing, and we still do it to this day,” says Somekh, a chef and founder of Bishulim SF, which caters Shabbat dinners, gift baskets and pop-ups. “I think I pick my friends
based on what part of the challah they eat.”
Today, the iconic, braided egg bread is a central part of Somekh’s contemporary Cal-israeli cuisine. Taking a cue from trends happening in Israel, Somekh, of Oakland, creates challah rolls — perfect for these personal-sized times — topped with seeds and herbs. Her full-sized loaves are often braided with chives or scallions or the creases stuffed with mozzarella balls and cherry tomatoes. She’s also been known to make pink challah with beet powder and green challah with matcha.
Skip the egg wash — brushing with water instead yields a hard, dark crust — and Somekh’s foolproof dough recipe becomes vegan. Over the years, she has used it to make everything from babka to the curry-filled balls she calls Jerusalem-stuffed bagels. That’s another Israeli trend. The shape is up to you.
“I love making flower shapes and rolls,” she says. “That’s the one we used to take to school when we were kids.”
By contrast, Andrea Potischman came to panettone on a personal dare. After mastering sourdough, New York-style bagels and Japanese milk bread, the former chef wanted to demystify the expensive, elaborately wrapped, Italian domed bread that appears in gourmet markets before Christmas. And she wanted to make it accessible for the busy home cooks who follow her blog, Simmer + Sauce.
“It is a diva bread,” says Potischman, of Menlo Park. “Even a lot of Italians don’t want to tackle it. It has a lengthy rise time, traditional height — always taller than it is wider — and a particular texture that is soft and crumb-like on the inside and darker and harder on the outside.”
Add in the pricey pan required to bake fruit-studded panettone and the arcane rituals — some bakers hang the dough upside down for hours to prevent cave-ins — and Potischman knew she needed to gently nudge this diva off her pedestal. After 10 panettone tests, she nailed a recipe made with a mix of dried apricots, raisins and just enough rum. The amount of orange zest is up to you.
“If it’s too zesty, I don’t like that,” she says. “I like savory more than sweet. That’s very personal.”
Her two biggest tips for success: Proof your dough overnight in a cold, closed oven. And use a springform pan lined with a tall collar of parchment paper stapled in place. From there, have fun.
“Italians traditionally eat panettone in the morning with coffee or in the evening with muscat, but because it is a tender, brioche sweet bread, it actually makes a fantastic French toast,” Potischman says. “You can also make mini versions in muffin tins and give them as gifts.”
Ralf and Ben Nielsen know all about bread gift-giving, too. In the days leading up to Christmas, the Danish brothers sell thousands of loaves of housemade Dresden Stollen, Swedish Cardamom Bread and other
European breads at their Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe in Burlingame.
“Christmas Eve is the biggest day of the year for us,” Ralf says of the bakery’s 40-year history. “It’s a zoo in here.”
With the Swedish Christmas Fair — one of their biggest customers — canceled this year due to the pandemic, the brothers are bracing for customers coming to the shop in droves for their sweet bread, which is typically eaten on Christmas morning with butter or cheese.
Though many bakers like braiding this aromatic dough, the Nielsens’ version is oval, and it’s made with butter, egg, milk powder and cardamom. For added texture, baker Ben says home cooks can hull their own cardamom pods, then grind the seeds to get a mix of fine and coarse bits — and a flavorful crunch in every bite of bread.
And if you decide to buy instead of bake, the Nielsens recommend you stop by early.
“It’s always smart for people to pick up their bread in mid-december and freeze it for a few weeks,” Ralf says, so you don’t go holiday bread-less.