The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I'm having a fairly Jewish bake-off on this, the last vaguely cool forecasted day of early summer.

I'm pitting Maggie Glezer's parve Czernowitzer challah from 'A Blessing of Bread' against Joan Nathan's Ultimate Challah (parve version). I'm baking by gram weights, so fair is fair.

I'm setting Joan Nathan's rugelach against Dorie Greenspan's rugelach. Both will have a chocolate cinnamon filling and a raspberry filling. There are hyoooge differences in the rugelach recipes, in spite of their making about the same quantity of dough, and I have always had better luck with Joan Nathan than Dorie Greenspan, but I've only ever made Dorie Greenspan cakes.

And then I might make a gezundhaytskuchen and freeze it, just because I have blue poppy seeds to bake with. It depends how hot the kitchen is and if I can find the pan.

Also, if you can sing even a few bars of the song this post's title comes from, I will mail you either a challah or some ruggies. This is how to keep Jewish culture alive, people: bribery.

There is no time limit on the prize, as I suspect most of the contenders are off somewhere being shabbesdik.

ETA on the heimishe bake-off: Joan Nathan and Dorie Greenspan's rugelach dough recipes are exactly the same, except that Joan Nathan lists double the ingredient amounts for the same quantity of rugelach as Dorie Greenspan's recipe supposedly yields. Huh??

To my mind, Maggie Glezer is the clear winner.

Both challahs were parve but not bland (you'd be surprised -- any food that does not come parve from nature has the potential to be hella bland) and both tore easily into long, soft strands.

The Joan Nathan challah, however, with its nearly 1:1 mix of high-gluten and all-purpose flours, was kind of funny in the crumb and its bottom crust was hard and thick and definite, about 1/4 inch thick. Very bizarre! It was also really white on the inside, although both flours I used were unbleached. The Joan Nathan dough is very tractable and easy to braid, though, so it might be better if you're doing a twelve-strand challah.


The Maggie Glezer challah has an all-over-even crust that's medium soft. It's yellowy on the inside, and more yeasty than sweet. When N. gets home to work the digital camera, maybe I'll post pictures -- it braided and baked up more amateur-looking, but its taste and texture is just great.