Yeasted cakes

Yeasted doughs, enriched with eggs, sugar and oil, butter or margarine, are at the heart of Ashkenazi cuisine. On Fridays, particularly in Me’ah She’arim and other orthodox neighbourhoods, you will find people queuing in bakeries for their challah (see picture) — wonderful, sweet braided Shabbat bread loved by all — just as they have done for generations in eastern and central Europe. Challah was adopted by Jews in southern Germany in the Middle Ages and spread all over the Ashkenazi world, where it was given various shapes, all having different religious significances.