A Blessing of Bread

This multifaceted guide to Jewish baking harbors a wealth of recipes for challahs from around the world, as well as for babkas and honey cakes, bagels and matzot, crackers and everyday breads such as deli rye. Working with bakers from Guatemala to Russia, Maggie Glezer perfected these recipes, many of which had never been written down. Recollections from Jewish grandmothers and great-grandmothers all over the world remind us of life as it once was, and riveting oral histories, ancient legends, shtetl folktales, aphorisms, and proverbs throughout will delight and inspire the baker in us all.

There is a special urgency to record, learn, and pass on culinary history if we are to preserve our traditional foods and customs. How fortunate that Maggie Glezer has taken the challenge.