Strolling into the Blessed Braid in Irvine seems like strolling into proprietor Cheryl Honig’s kitchen. The fashionable kosher bakery, which celebrated its grand opening earlier this month, isn’t arrange like a conventional bakery with a case of baked items behind glass. As a substitute Honig’s bakery has a marble-topped counter on the heart she calls the “welcome island” with plates of cookies, rolls and bread on show beneath glass cloches.
“Once I was designing the bakery, I didn’t need to have a division between the visitor and the host,” Honig stated.
Honig has been baking her complete grownup life, largely for household at dwelling, the place she has two farm-style tables she units with meals every time she hosts an occasion.
“Everybody walks round with their plate and gathers their meals. It permits everybody to congregate, to converse and to be built-in and to really feel like dwelling. I needed that very same factor for my bakery.”
Cheryl Honig is the proprietor of the kosher Jewish bakery, the Blessed Braid in Irvine.
(Scott Smeltzer / Employees Photographer)
Honig began promoting Challah, a three-strand braided bread, from her dwelling about three years in the past.
“I acquired a allow from the Orange County Well being Division to take action,” she stated. “Then at one level I needed to resolve if I needed to maintain my enterprise small or go right into a brick and mortar.”
She took to turning the Irvine area, previously a bookstore, into her dream bakery with blue wainscoting and hanging pendant lights over the welcome island making a homey really feel.
Prospects circle the island and feast their eyes on conventional items like Challah bread she makes in conventional, raisin, poppy seed, sesame seed and marble chip. Vegan Challah can also be out there on request.
“We began with 10 base merchandise, which had been all my recipes,” Honig stated.
Treats from her head bakers make it to the island as a “weekly shock.”
“Then we get suggestions from our prospects after which it will get promoted to an everyday merchandise on our welcome island, like our gluten-free chocolate soufflé cookie,” stated Honig.
Honig’s enterprise philosophy goes past her bakery’s structure. The Blessed Braid is non-dairy and kosher licensed.
“We’re a totally kosher licensed bakery, that means each single ingredient, all of the tools, has been inspected and analyzed by rabbis up on the Rabbinical Council of California,” stated Honig. “And we’re all non-dairy, so there isn’t any cream, no butter.”
Jennifer De La Cruz makes pecan drops on the kosher Jewish bakery, the Blessed Braid in Irvine.
(Scott Smeltzer / Employees Photographer)
The kosher certification means just a few additional steps for her crew.
“Previous to opening, something that was glass, ceramic or metallic needed to undergo a mikvah,” Honig stated, referring to the ceremonial tub designed for the Jewish ceremony of purification.
Generally, preserving kosher presents distinctive challenges. For instance, Honig not too long ago labored with the Jewish Israel Membership of Woodbridge Excessive Faculty on a fundraiser to assist Ukraine and regarded excessive and low earlier than lastly discovering blue and yellow adorning sugar that was licensed kosher for a Ukraine-themed cookie.
Though the Blessed Braid is kosher licensed, it isn’t licensed for Passover, which might imply many extra further necessities. The bakery closes in observance of Jewish holidays and can shut its doorways from April 18 to 22 for Passover.
However Honig stated taking the care to ensure her enterprise is kosher licensed additionally signifies that extra individuals can get pleasure from it. A part of Jewish dietary legislation dictates that meat and milk merchandise not be combined collectively.
“Any Jew of any stage of observance can eat any product, at any meal, and be happy to offer it to any good friend and never have to fret that there’s any dairy in it,” stated Honig.
Moreover Challah, well-liked objects embrace kichel, a Yiddish identify for a crunchy bow-tie formed cookie wearing turbinado sugar and kamishbroyt, a raisin and maraschino cherry deal with whose identify is derived from the phrase utilized in Ukraine to explain a cookie and the Yiddish phrase for bread.
Kamishbroyt are on the market on the Blessed Braid in Irvine.
(Scott Smeltzer / Employees Photographer)
Nontraditional fare can also be on show, like a peanut butter and jelly cookie topped with salty potato chips, and a butterscotch haystack made with salted peanuts and crunchy chow mein noodles held along with melted butterscotch chips and peanut butter.
“One in all signature issues is our Belgian road waffle,” Honig stated. “We make these proper right here when the visitor is ready after which they get to stroll away with a heat waffle that has pearl sugar in it and is dusted with powdered sugar.”
Two waffle irons sit within the nook of the kitchen, seen from the big image window that permits company to see proper into the kitchen.
“I needed individuals to see that we’re totally clear, that we solely have healthful elements which you could simply spell and pronounce,” stated Honig.
Visitors aren’t the one ones watching the bakery.
As a part of the method of sustaining her kosher certification, Honig works carefully with the Rabbinical Council of California, a nonprofit that addresses meals, authorized and different points for the Jewish group in California. Every quarter, Honig’s kosher certification will get renewed by the council.
Cheryl Honig seems at freshly baked items on the Blessed Braid in Irvine.
(Scott Smeltzer / Employees Photographer)
“There are six cameras within the bakery, and the Rabbi’s have entry to them 24/4,” Honig stated. “After which each month, there’s a secret Rabbi that is available in and he doesn’t inform us when, and he inspects all the pieces.”
Honig maintains that the Orange County Jewish group wants a kosher bakery, and she or he is completely happy to present that place. By making all the pieces kosher and nondairy, objects are accessible to all members of the Jewish group, and there’s no restrictions on when and what they will purchase by way of Jewish dietary legislation.
And making everybody really feel welcome in her kitchen is the icing on the black-and-white cookie.
“It’s like we’re placing on a celebration and our prospects are actually our company,” stated Honig.
