Some people (you know who you are!!!) don’t eat bread. They find it too… bread-like, too… carby, too… just too… something. These people are silly. Bread is wonderful, bread is delightful, bread is the best. And don’t get me started on what you can put in/on/around/between it.

Yet there’s bread and there’s bread. Paul Hollywood is Mr Bread. Not because he looks like he’s actually made from 2 very large, fluffy, fat loaves, but because he reckons he can bake it to perfection. Well not my bread he can’t. Because today is the most special day EVER (literally) for the bread we call ‘challah’. And that’s not pronounced with a ‘ch-‘ like ‘chair’, but a chchch- like clearing your throat before you spit. As if you’d spit.

People mistakenly call challah ‘Jewish bread’. It’s not. Nothing like. Challah, baked properly, can only be made by God himself. Sorry, or herself. Itself. By their gender-neutral-self. Whatever. Because no bread anywhere tastes quite like it. Slightly sweet and made with egg. Which is unusual for bread. And even Jews can only really get it on Fridays, as its baked for the Sabbath.

I’m actually fascinated by bread (coeliacs and glutards may check other pages now). In a geographical sense. Because as you travel East in the world (as if you could, like we once did) the bread gets flatter and flatter. In Western Europe we like our bread big and soft and a bit crusty on the outside. Yet when you get to even Italy, they’re making pizza bases (and what the fuck is a pizza if not an open sandwich?) and by Greece your Hovis is replaced with pitta. Which is flat but at least opens up. Turkey has those too, but also represents the start of proper, single-sheet, flat breads. Which is what bread is all across the Middle East and beyond. When you arrive at India, Pakistan and proper sub-continent Eastern nations, its all naan and chapati and roti. Mainly because they’re so good for mopping up curries, but also because most people there are savages who wouldn’t know a knife and fork from a bowler hat or an Oyster card.

Go further east and the bread has flattened off still further and is called ‘rice’.

Today is Friday. Challah day. But not only that, its the first day after Passover, when no self-respecting Jew would EVERRRR eat anything vaguely bread-ish (fortunately I have absolutely no self-respect so my rules are slightly relaxed compared to the standards of anyone wearing a black hat in summertime). So Jews are desperate for bread today. And not just any bread, but it happens to coincide with Friday. AND, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in a lock-down type situation and not supposed to go out. Unless ITS ESSENTIAL. And what could be more essential than that.

They were queuing hundreds of yards outside all the Jewish bread shops this morning (for reference, in current climate, 100 yards = 4 paranoid people). But we got in. Ok, by sneezing and coughing our way to the front, but we got in. Our Marie Antoinette moment. “Fuck the cake, let them eat challah!!”

Happy pre-sabbath bread Day

A xxxx