World Shabbat Breads: Berches, the First Braided Challah

Berches, a German Shabbat bread, is both like and unlike the challah we know and love in America today. Like challah, it’s braided. Unlike most contemporary American challah, it’s made with an eggless dough—and, in place of egg, often contains mashed potato for a softer texture. The resulting loaf is pleasingly light and chewy, with a crispy crust and a more savory flavor profile than a common challah.

While Sabbath loaves date back to biblical times, the origins of berches (also known as barches, barkhes, or berkhes) can likely be traced to the fifteenth century, when Jews in Austria and Southern Germany began modeling their Shabbat bread on a popular German braided loaf. Prior to this period, Ashkenazim lacked a dedicated Shabbat bread and would use any white loaf for the purpose (as many non-Ashkenazi Jews continue to do to this day).

Braiding had several advantages: not only was it an attractive way to set this festive bread apart from its everyday counterparts; it also kept the bread fresher longer. As braiding became ubiquitous in German-Jewish communities, families even began to develop their own trademark braids in order to distinguish their own loaves from those of their neighbors at the communal ovens common in this era.

The etymology of this new bread’s name is a controversial topic in the world of Jewish food history scholarship. Berches has variously been purported to derive from the High German word bergita, arms, based on the braided loaf’s resemblance to interlocked arms; the name of German fertility goddess Berchta, for whom non-Jewish German women once baked braided loaves meant to resemble plaited hair; and the Hebrew word birkat, blessing, often engraved on knives used to cut Shabbat bread. Though it’s arguably the least interesting of the three potential etymologies, recent scholarship points to the latter theory as the most likely culprit.

The braided Shabbat loaf gradually spread eastward, though it did so under the alternate biblical name challah, which was first used to refer to the braided loaves in parts of Austria. Over time and across miles and ever-changing borders, it evolved into the sweet, eggy bread common in America today. Potato was a late addition to berches, added to the mix only in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century once the humble tuber had made its way from Peru to Prussia, and one that seems never to have gained favor in parts further east—perhaps surprisingly, due to the ubiquity of the potato across Eastern Europe by the nineteenth century.

Though berches crossed the ocean with the many German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was quickly eclipsed by Eastern European challah. Once commonplace in New York City’s Washington Heights during the heyday of its German-Jewish community in the mid-twentieth century, berches is now nearly impossible to find commercially.  Surprisingly, today you’re more likely to find berches in some random corner of Austria or Germany than in New York City: there are bakeries in berches’ former homelands that continue to sell the loaves to this day, sometimes without even being aware of the bread’s Jewish heritage.

The berches recipe below is slightly modified from the one in Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman’s excellent German-Jewish Cookbook, available on the associated blog in slightly different form. It makes two medium-large loaves.

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Berches

7 cups bread flour, plus more as needed

2 ¼ cups warm water, as needed, divided

1 envelope (2 ¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ cup neutral oil, such as canola or safflower

1 large white potato (such as russet), boiled, peeled, mashed, and cooled

1 ½ tablespoons salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1–2 tablespoons black poppy seeds, optional

Place flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center.

Pour ¼ cup lukewarm water in the well. Add yeast and sugar and stir gently to dissolve. Let sit for 5–10 minutes, until bubbling.

Add oil, mashed potato, and salt. With a wooden spoon, mix the flour into the yeast mixture in the well. Gradually add warm water as needed to moisten the flour while continuing to mix.

If kneading by hand, remove dough from bowl and knead on floured surface until all flour is incorporated and dough is smooth. If using a mixer, mix until the same consistency is reached.

Grease mixing bowl lightly with oil. Return dough to bowl, cover, leave to rise in a warm spot until doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Punch down dough in bowl. Turn out onto floured surface and knead until smooth.

Line with parchment or lightly oil a baking sheet. Divide dough into two even pieces. To make four-stranded loaves, divide each piece into four and roll into ropes about 12 inches long. Pinch the tops of the four strands together. Take the strand furthest to the right, and weave it over the next furthest right strand, then under the next, and over the last. Then take the strand that is now furthest to the right (formerly second furthest to the right) and repeat the over-under-over pattern. Keep this up, always starting with whichever strand is furthest right, until the strands are too short to continue braiding. Pinch the ends together.

Place loaves on cookie sheet and cover loaves with moistened towel. Return to warm spot and let rise until doubled in size, about 1–2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350° F. Brush top of loaves with beaten egg and sprinkle evenly with the poppy seeds if using. Bake for 30–40 minutes, or until the top is light golden brown and the bottom of the loaf makes a hollow sound. Let cool on a rack.

Sources: Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food (John Cooper, 1993); Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Gil Marks, 2010); The German-Jewish Cookbook: Recipes and History of a Cuisine (Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman, 2017); Jewish Food: The World at Table (Matthew Goodman, 2005); King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World (Joan Nathan, 2017); Rhapsody in Schmaltz: Yiddish Food and Why We Can’t Stop Eating It (Michael Wex, 2016)

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