Meet the baker celebrating the therapeutic power of challah

For Jewish women, making challah is infinitely more meaningful than just making a regular loaf — it’s a duty of religious dimensions. The Mishnah in Shabbat instructs us to “take care in… separating challah” (2:6). Though the mitzvah applies to both genders, some women feel a particularly feminine pull towards mastering the historic ritual which has been passed down through generations.

It was that visceral urge to bake challah and share it with loved ones that inspired Badannie Gee, a TV producer turned celebration cake baker, to begin hosting her self-styled ‘challah-brations’, teaching other women the culinary art.

"Making challah is a beautiful and totally underrated ritual that we are lucky and blessed to have. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s something that we share every week,” she said. “On top of that, what I’ve created is more than just making a loaf of bread, but a space where people feel held and can share and talk."

The former television producer, who, during the pandemic pivoted from a 20-year career in television production to set up Piped Dreams Bakery says her challah baking groups began last year, after a special trip to Israel.

The Highgate-based baker was inspired by a challah bake she attended there in August 2023 for her niece’s wedding. As the female relatives of the bride and groom kneaded dough, they each shared a special memory or a tender sentiment about the couple. Gee felt a powerful sense of female Jewish lineage. “I was in a room full of people speaking Hebrew, and we were all sharing in this ritual,” she said.

“Even though I didn’t know what they were saying, I felt this shared language that we all had, and the transcendence of this thing in the room uniting us which was more than just baking bread.”

They made their dough then left it outside in the warm air to rise before shaping and baking it. Gee felt an extraordinary sense of community with her fellow bakers. “We made a loaf together made up of all of our parts, we ate it and shared it full of love and intention and thought.”

Gee returned home after the wedding, and a month later came October 7.

“What happened in the weeks and months after that left a lot of people feeling lost and heartbroken. I found that I just had this urge to bake and to make challah,” she said.

Inspired by the sense of uplift and togetherness she’d felt making challah among women in Israel, Gee organised a similar one for her close female friends in England, giving them a space to share their fears and prayers for Israel at such a dark time.

She led a sort of “ceremony” from her kitchen, guiding her closest friends through the ritual of kneading the dough while giving them a safe place to talk though their unspoken feelings.

“It was incredibly moving and emotional and for most of us, it felt like a really sacred space where we were able to open up and talk and at the same time we were creating,” she said.

“While everything felt very dark and there were destructive forces in the world, what we were doing was creating, and creating a light between women.”
Following the bake, Gee received several thank-you notes from attendees, telling her how therapeutic they found baking bread together and many requests to host more, and gradually she grasped how widespread the feminine desire to learn the historic art was.
She now runs around two bakes per month which are no longer as sombre as the bakes following October 7. She’s been invited to hold her challah-brations before bat mitzvahs, at an 80th birthday and an interfaith event, to guide attendees through the joyful process.
Even though she terms them challah-brations, the bakes serve a serious, therapeutic function, giving Jewish women a sense of community and solidarity during what has been a difficult year. “It’s about the process of getting together, slowing down and stopping what we were doing that makes us go a million miles an hour.

“Just breathing and saying, 'Okay, let’s put away that chatting noise in our heads and let’s put intention into our hands and into the dough, and let’s plait into these challot our love, hopes, dreams, thoughts and prayers.”

At the bakes, Gee encourages attendees to think back to their earliest memories of the special, fluffy bread. For Gee, it’s being collected early from school in Manchester by her mother on Fridays and waiting in the car for the fresh loaf from Brackman’s bakery to arrive. She can still vividly recollect the appealing sound of the crinkly brown bag containing the warm loaf, the bread’s sweet aroma, and the ritual of tucking into an extra challah knot with her mum.

"I think there’s something about challah, if you’re Jewish and you’ve grown up with it, it’s not just bread, it’s not just a carb, it’s not like buying a sough dough, there’s a huge amount of nostalgia.”

She shares plenty of tips to make the best challah, like adding flour slowly so you don’t add too much and make your loaf dry and making sure to cool your freshly baked loaf on a wire rack to avoid a soggy bottom.

Ultimately though, she tells me, the best challah is one braided with love. At her challah-brations, it’s certainly not a bread beauty pageant, with the real beauty being in the uniqueness baked into every loaf. “Whatever intentions you bake into your challah is what your loved ones are going to be digesting.”

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