Who likes French toast?

September 17, 2011

To jest chalka.

Chalka z maslem.

The weekends have always been when I like to experiment with food. Any of you who read my other blog, Lowcountry Local Foodie, know this well. This weekend is no different. This weekend's experimental creation goes directly to the Origins of Polska herself....and somehow it begins with a history lesson and ends with French toast.

How??, you may ask. The story begins around the year AD 965, or even earlier, and it involves a bread called challah or chalka. (Please humor me and click on the links, I promise you will learn something!).

I will now give credit where it is due to my husband, Doug. While I was at work this morning, he was making challah. He found a recipe online, made it, and it has perfumed my kitchen all day.

If you have never had it before, I suggest that you find some soon! Challah is a delicious egg-bread that is similar to brioche. It is a special braided bread that is eaten on the Sabbath and holidays of members of the Jewish faith. Jews and Gentiles alike enjoy challah, thanks to the sharing of traditions and homogenization of culture in places like the USA. The biggest difference between challah and brioche is that challah, being pareve, is not made with dairy. Brioche and other sweet egg-breads commonly contain butter or milk. I've had both versions, and they're both equally excellent!

Chalka has been ubiquitous in the diets of the Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Western and Eastern Europe for over two thousand years. The largest population of Jews in Europe prior to 1945 was in Poland. There is also very little reason to doubt that Jews lived in Poland from the earliest of times, and that Judaism had antedated Christianity.1

Prior to the 1700's, Poland served as an oasis for Jews, a place where they could live with less persecution. When England kicked out all of it's Jews in the year 1290, many fled to Poland. In 1262, Boleslaus the Modest, Prince of Cracow, granted a General Charter of Jewish Liberties. These liberties listed the "right of the Jews to travel round the country without molestation; to engage in trade; to pursue their own religious practices, including worshiping in synagogues, Jewish burial, and ritual slaughter; and to be exempted from slavery or serfdom." This provided the basis of later Jewish prosperity in Poland up until the 1900's."2

These liberties did give Jews an advantage over the peasant class, leading Jews to securing the majority of the merchant and intelligentsia classes in Poland up until 1945.

Now...on a lighter note...the challah! And the French toast! How does that fit in?

I will let you explore this on your own. Alton Brown states that French toast is best made with very stale bread. This is true, in that if you slice fresh bread and let it stale overnight, it will absorb more of the custard that sets French toast apart from just plain toast.

Egg-based breads, like challah, are excellent at going stale. If you slice your challah into 1.5 inch thick slices the night before you make French toast, and leave them sitting out in your microwave, uncovered, this will do the trick. The more the dehydrated, or stale, the bread, the more moisture it can absorb!

Doug used this recipe today: Bistro Challah Bread (which is technically a brioche)

*Making your own brioche or challah from scratch will create bread that goes stale faster, as most commercial bakers (yes, even the ones at the farmer's market) use dough conditioners. These "conditioners" extend the shelf life of bread slightly, but are not true preservatives. If you buy commercial challah, let the bread go stale for two days in the refrigerator instead of just overnight.

Tomorrow we will eat French toast for brunch, made with our stale challah: Alton Brown's French toast recipe

It is only right for anyone who wants to sample the food of Poland to include challah. It is not only delicious, it is a part of what Poland has been and is....something great!

Works cited:

1. Davies, Norman. God's Playground: A History of Poland. Volume 1. The Origins to 1795. p. 64-66.

2. Davies, Norman. God's Playground: A History of Poland. Volume 1. The Origins to 1795. p. 67.

* Poles please forgive the mis-spelling of Chalka....I haven't figured out how to make the L-slash letter yet on my keyboard!

A B C, it's easy as 1, 2, 3.....

September 11, 2011

Well, here I am at the end of my first week of Polish language training. It has been quite interesting so far! I'm trying this morning to focus on reviewing our lessons for the last week instead of on the events that happened 10 years ago a couple of Metrorail stops south of my home.

The hardest thing so far is learning how to pronounce these very strange Polish words. We are learning to say our A-B-Cs this week, and also variations on the letter sounds. The Polish alphabet is almost the same as in English, since we share the Latin alphabet. But the variations are difficult. I think that the familiarity of having the same alphabet actually makes it harder. For example, not only do you have the letter e, but you have ę, which sounds different when you say it. The letter Q is not even in the polski alfabet.

Those of you who have never seen the written word in Polish, go ahead and Google some up. The first thing that you will notice is that the words are made up of very few vowels.

A few good examples I've had to deal with this week are:

czterdziesty

osiem

dziewięć

trzy

siedem

(Those are all numbers, by the way)

The "hooks" and "slashes" associated with letters like s and e don't tell you where to put emphasis on the word, or syllable, but tells you how to change the sound of the letter itself.

I am able to read most Polish words out loud, learning the phonetic rules, and sounding them out slowly, then faster and faster. I think that for the next several months, I will continue to feel a little like Eliza Doolittle, struggling to train my mind and mouth to match what is proper Polish.

I find that the Poles don't really care as much about pronunciation of their words, unlike the French. A lot of their words, like in American English usage, run into each other, and sounds get blurred. Even if you say it wrong, they know what you're saying.

It's been very frustrating for me so far, but it's getting a little easier every day. Practice makes perfect. I'm using a lot of youtube videos to help me hone my pronunciation, and to sing the alfabet and numbers 1-10. Last night on the bus ride out to the Falls Church Dogfish Head Alehouse, Doug very patiently taught me to count to 10 in Polish, and to spell them correctly.....all in 20 minutes. Let's see if I remember it all today......

Anyways, I thought I'd give a small update on how things are going. We will see what this week brings.

In the meantime, I'll continue learning my Ah, Beh, Cehs......it's easy as jeden, dwa, trzey!