Growing up in Leawood, much of Hannah Gortenburg’s creativity went into arts and crafts. Then at age 20 she fell in love with challah and realized baking could be creative as well.
For Thanksgiving she made challah rolls in the shape of a turkey and a round challah for Rosh Hashanah. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}Now she’s working on various shapes she could make for Hanukkah, like a Star of David. She bakes regular challah, too, including cinnamon, sesame and poppy seed, and a pull-apart challah, which is composed of 10 rolls. Soon, she will be baking babke cakes.
“I started by myself; I didn’t really know if I was going to be good at it,” she says.
The number of challot she bakes each week varies, but her biggest week was for Rosh Hashanah when she made 80 in one day. She had a few helpers, but says it was quite hectic. All of Gortenburg’s challot are Vaad-supervised and have the kosher hechsher.
Proceeds of the sales from her business, Chai Challot, go to Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, where she graduated in 2010, because she wants to support the school.
“I really benefited from that school a lot and I wanted to give back,” she says. “Just the kind of person I turned out to be has a lot to do with Hyman Brand. The kind of people that come out of the school are more down to earth, a really good type of people, always wanting to give, always finding ways to help others. It’s just a really good school.”
For Gortenburg, 23, making challah is a spiritual as well as creative experience. She enjoys seeing it through from start to finish.
“You see it starting out as this big mess of flour and you don’t even know if it’s going to come together,” she says. “Then it does and it’s this smooth, beautiful dough and it smells amazing. You have to give it tons of time to do its own thing; you can’t really control anything about it. It needs to rise, then you have to punch it down, then you braid it and it has to rise again. It has its own little process.
“The other beautiful thing about it is that you can make a blessing while you’re making the challah, so you can really connect with other people. If people ask you to bless someone who’s sick, you can make that blessing while you’re making the dough.”
Gortenburg practices what is known in Hebrew as hafrashat challah. “You take a piece of dough off the challah dough and then you have time to say any prayer that you want,” she says.
This stems from Numbers 15:18-21 where it says, “You shall make a gift to the Lord from the first yield of your baking, throughout the ages.”
Gortenburg bakes her challot every Wednesday at Rams Café located in the lobby of the Jewish Community Campus and run by Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy PTO volunteers. Her original challah is $7 a loaf and is one-and-a-half pounds. The pull-apart challah is $6.50. In addition to the orders she receives, she makes around 10 challot each week just for last minute Ram’s Café Shabbat customers to pick up.
She’s trying to get the word out that customers can order challah from her in advance for Shabbat and other occasions, and would like to limit her challah baking to orders only so there’s no waste.
You can order Gortenburg’s challot through her website at chaichallot.com or email her at and pick them up at Ram’s Café.
In addition to challah baking, Gortenburg is enrolled in the Johnson County Community College pastry program where she is learning to make mostly French pastries. She says she has aspirations to be a pastry chef when she graduates, but that won’t stop her from continuing with her challot.
Gortenburg is the daughter of Karen and Michael Gortenburg. She is married to Yuval Elharar.{/mprestriction}
