There is no short­age of stress-man­age­ment prac­tices out there: med­i­ta­tion, spend­ing time in nature, mind­ful­ness, see­ing friends, to name just a few. There is, how­ev­er, one com­mon denom­i­na­tor in all of the advice giv­en: do a prac­tice con­sis­tent­ly to reap its fullest benefits.

Such is the premise of Dr. Beth Ricanati’s sec­ond install­ment in her bak­ing-chal­lah-as-well­ness-prac­tice series. Where­as her first book, Braid­ed, a Jour­ney of a Thou­sand Chal­lahs, shares her sto­ry of reclaim­ing a sense of inner peace through the ancient rit­u­al of bak­ing chal­lah, this book dives deep­er into the meth­ods that are ​“baked in” to the rit­u­al — sev­en prac­tices that any­one can imple­ment to man­age stress and find connection.

In the intro­duc­tion, Rica­nati shares how, thou­sands of chal­lahs lat­er, this jour­ney has brought her ​“solace and a sense of peace,” point­ing out that it’s not just the rit­u­al of bak­ing, but also the act of kind­ness when you share the rit­u­al, that is sooth­ing to the soul. 

Chap­ter one offers back­sto­ry: Rica­nati gives read­ers a brief glimpse into her life before and after she took on the week­ly rit­u­al that then grew into a world­wide move­ment. By Chap­ter 2, she is dig­ging into the sci­ence. Address­ing naysay­ers first, she acknowl­edges that some might argue bak­ing chal­lah is a chore — just one more thing we ​“should” do, on our already too-long-list of ​“shoulds.” But on the heels of this acknowl­edge­ment, Rica­nati empha­sizes that it’s pre­cise­ly the repet­i­tive act of bak­ing chal­lah each week — the rit­u­al aspect — that is essen­tial to our men­tal health. We need rit­u­als, for they ground us — some­thing espe­cial­ly impor­tant dur­ing this long and trau­mat­ic peri­od of insta­bil­i­ty in our world. ​“I only had to show up at my kitchen counter each week,” Rica­nati writes, “… [and] my stress less­ened. I was more present and sub­se­quent­ly this qual­i­ty was spilling over into the rest of my life.” 

Rica­nati then explores each of the sev­en prac­tices that com­prise ​“the braid­ed pre­scrip­tion”: act with inten­tion; stop and breathe; embrace Imper­fec­tion (very impor­tant for any­one who has ever tried to braid a chal­lah with a small child!); act authen­ti­cal­ly; engage in chal­lah diplo­ma­cy (shar­ing is car­ing); dare to pre­pare; engage in pos­i­tive social con­nec­tion. The inten­tions are not only a frame­work for reap­ing the spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of week­ly chal­lah bak­ing, but also an excel­lent recipe for a good life. (There’s also an easy-to-fol­low actu­al recipe, for a great challah.)

Inter­spersed with the chap­ters on inten­tions are ​“doctor’s side­bars” — bits of sci­ence to under­score the proven health ben­e­fits to the prac­tice of chal­lah bak­ing: the impor­tance of unprocessed food and mod­er­a­tion, the brain ben­e­fits one derives from work­ing with her hands, the unde­ni­able link between stress and health.

Ear­ly in the book, Rica­nati quotes Ahad Ha’am, the Ukrain­ian-born Hebrew jour­nal­ist and a promi­nent thought leader of his time, who empha­sized Jew­ish cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty before the found­ing of the State of Israel. He wrote, ​“we don’t just braid the chal­lah, the chal­lah braids us.” Shared rit­u­als strength­en iden­ti­ty. A strong sense of iden­ti­ty brings joy, maybe even peace. 

I can’t think of a bet­ter rea­son to bake a chal­lah this week.