The Essential Jewish Baking Cookbook: 50 Traditional Recipes for Every Occasion

By Beth A. Lee

Make traditional Jewish baked goods at home
Baking is an integral part of Jewish culture and traditions. Whether you're making challah for Shabbat, macaroons for Passover, or babka for family brunch, The Essential Jewish Baking Cookbook helps you capture the essence of traditional Jewish baking in your own kitchen. It's filled with 50 classic recipes—ones you might remember your bubbe or mom whipping up—with clear instructions to help you make them successfully every time.
Inside this Jewish cookbook for home bakers, you'll find:

- Your favorite baked goods—From bagels and bialys to rugelach, kugel, and more, you'll discover a variety of sweet and savory recipes that are perfect for everyday baking and holidays alike.
- An intro to Jewish baking—Gain the knowledge and confidence you need to get started, with guidance on kosher baking, plus essential techniques, tools, and ingredients.
- Beginner-friendly recipes—Each recipe includes easy-to-follow directions and uses basic ingredients to ensure you get it right, even if you've never tried your hand at Jewish baking before.
Discover the joy of Jewish baking with The Essential Jewish Baking Cookbook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 14, 2025
• ISBN: 9781648765681

Book preview

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Interior and Cover Designer: Stephanie Mautone

Art Producer: Sara Feinstein

Editor: Cecily McAndrews

Production Editor: Mia Moran

Production Manager: Riley Hoffman

Photography © 2021 Annie Martin. Food styling by Nadine Page. Author photo courtesy of Rosie Samuel Photography

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64876-567-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-64876-568-1

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To my dear Bubbe, a brilliant baker who never wrote down a recipe. May this book bring her baking back to life.

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Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

The Jewish Bakery Intro

CHAPTER TWO

Challah, Babka, and Breads

Deli-Style No-Knead Rye Bread

Marbled Rye Sandwich Bread

Bubbe’s Challah

Hearty Whole Wheat Challah

Sweet Challah Rolls with Apple Currant Filling

Roskas: A Sweet Sephardic Roll

Lachuch, a Holey Yemenite Pancake

Malawach, Yemenite Flatbread

Maya’s Pillowy Pita

Ready-for-Lox Homemade Bagels

PLetzel, Not PRetzel!

Jerusalem Bagel Pretzel

Onion-Scented Bialys

Kokosh, Beigli’s and Babka’s Cousin

A Hero’s Chocolate Babka

CHAPTER THREE

Sweet and Savory Pastries

Shortcut Apple Strudel

Traditional Potato and Cheese Borekas

Pastelicos, Meat-Filled Borekas

Orange–Olive Oil Hamantaschen

Hermine’s Hamantaschen

Blintz Casserole

Apricot Chocolate Rugelach

Sally’s Baklava

Grandma Mellman’s Knishes

Pecan and Raisin Schnecken

CHAPTER FOUR

Cookies and Cakes

Biscochos de Benveniste

Nana’s Mandelbrot

Chocolate-Dipped Almond Coconut Macaroons

Date and Walnut Thumbprints

Black-and-White Cookies

Crispy Bow-Tie Kichel

Marble Pound Cake

Apple Cake with Candied Ginger and Cinnamon

Sandy’s Poppy Seed Coffee Cake

Honey Kovrizhka, Russian Honey Cake

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Jam-Liqueur Sauce

New York–Style Cheesecake Bars

Light-as-Air Tishpishti

Citrus Sponge Cake

Honey Cookies

CHAPTER FIVE

More Treats and Toppings

Marilyn’s Pestila

Berry Fruit Compote

Bubbe’s Matzo Meal Pancake

Dana’s Ultimate Sweet Apple Noodle Kugel

Savory Matzo Farfel Kugel

Challah Bread Pudding

Sandi’s Honey Sesame Candy

Bimuelos with Orange Syrup

Baked or Fried Soufganiyot (Jelly Donuts)

Taiglach with Honey Ginger Syrup

Measurement Conversions

Resources

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

I WISH I COULD SAY I’VE BEEN BAKING RIGHT BY MY BUBBE’S SIDE since I was five years old. The truth is, I was more of an inquisitive observer and an eager taster.

But all along, my baking bug was brewing.

Throughout my childhood, I loved watching my grandma’s thick, workmanlike fingers manipulate dough with ease. She spent summer after summer with us in Massachusetts kneading and rolling at the sunlit counter in the corner of the kitchen, but I waited until right before we moved to California to insist on visiting her in her tiny Brooklyn apartment to write down her challah recipe.

Scrap paper and pen in hand, my mom and I watched and wrote down Bubbe’s process. A whole bag of flour (no cups or grams), a third of a juice glass of water and as much oil and sugar. There were no actual measurements, no photos or videos of any kind. Just my hand-printed notes and my mom’s in cursive on the back of an envelope.

Somehow, the scribbled recipe survived our cross-country move (and all of my moves thereafter). Miraculously, my bubbe lived to 100 and kept baking into her 90s. But her six kids didn’t exactly follow suit. Four girls, two boys, no bakers. As my love for cooking blossomed, I would take out that scrappy envelope from time to time, trying to muster the courage to give challah-making a try.

While I became quite proficient at savory cooking in college, many years passed before I really dove into baking. But trust me—you don’t need to wait to broaden your baking horizons. With a few simple tools, ingredients, and techniques, it’s easy to get started. If you are, like me, a latecomer to baking, know that you can become a confident baker at any age.

This book will give you the recipes and the confidence you need to immerse yourself in traditional Jewish baking. It will take you back to your own precious memories of Jewish treats and help you bake some new ones. But you won’t be working with barely legible notes or impossible-to-replicate measurements. Instead, in this book you’ll find 50 essential Jewish baking recipes—the ones you might remember your grandma or mom making—with all the details you need to make them a success every time.

Baking and eating are integral to Jewish culture and traditions. Think of challah for Shabbat, cookies at an Oneg, the sweets table at a wedding or bar or bat mitzvah, borekas or boyo at a family brunch. Or the cinnamon-scented coffee cake you dream about all day in temple as you eagerly await breaking the fast on Yom Kippur. Or maybe your memories include a tishpishti or sponge cake to end a festive seder meal.

But if, like me, you didn’t learn to bake growing up, you can still build that tradition into your own family kitchen. Perhaps you don’t identify as Jewish yourself but are married to or live with someone who does, and you want to learn more about Jewish culinary traditions. This book will be your own file of recipes both new and old so you can bake for your spouse, partner, or friends.

You’ll find many classic favorites in this collection, often with carefully adapted methods and ingredients to fit our modern lifestyles. Some more advanced equipment that wasn’t around in our grandmothers’ kitchens—stand mixers, for one—can make bread-making easier on a busy day without sacrificing any of the joy of taking a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven.

With this book, you’ll feel like my bubbe (or yours) is by your side, teaching you how the dough should feel, when the cookie is just crisp enough around the edges, how you’ll know when the cake is baked. Everyone’s food story is different—I hope you enjoy creating yours through the pages of this book.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Jewish Bakery Intro

Every experienced home baker has their own arsenal of gadgets, equipment, and methods they can’t live without in the kitchen. If you don’t have experience baking, this chapter will provide the next best thing: guidance on tools and techniques to bake any recipe in the book.

My grandma’s kitchen was the size of a small closet, but she baked enough to feed a large extended family along with half the neighborhood—no exaggeration. Whether you want to bake profusely or just occasionally, this chapter will give you the knowledge and confidence you need to start baking.

BUBBE’S RECIPE BOX

My bubbe’s recipe box existed only in her head. She never learned to write, and even if she had, I’ll never know if she would have written down any of her recipes. But this isn’t the case for everyone—many people do have written recipes from their moms, aunts, grandmas, even great-grandmas. Many others have inherited old cookbooks, sometimes with hidden scraps of paper tucked inside, giving them a glimpse into old family recipes.

No two Jewish recipe boxes are alike. My personal collection is full of traditional Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish recipes like rugelach, knishes, babka, and kugel. Two college friends of mine have parents who came from Greece and identify as Sephardic Jews. Their Jewish recipe box contains the likes of biscochos, borekas, and baklava. And when I visited Israel in 2017, I discovered another type of recipe box—that of Mizrahi Jews, who originate primarily from Middle Eastern or Asian countries. Mizrahi recipes include pita, lachuch, and ka’ak.

This book offers a taste from all of the above Jewish culinary traditions. If you grew up eating East Coast Ashkenazi favorites, you’ll be acquainted with many of the beloved traditional recipes in these pages. But I encourage you to open up less-familiar recipe boxes as well. Borekas, an early-morning snack or lunch on the run, are found all over Israel. They may