2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in Women's Issues Nonfiction
2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in Body, Mind & Spirit
2020 Eric Hoffer Award, Grand Prize Shortlist Finalist
2020 Eric Hoffer Award, 1st runner up in Nonfiction - Home
2020 Eric Hoffer Award, First Horizon Award Finalist
2019 Wilbur Award, Nonfiction Winner
2019 Readers' Favorite Awards, Finalist in Nonfiction - Cooking/Food
2018 Foreword INDIES Winner, Self-Help
2018 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies, Finalist
“In reading Beth Ricanati’s Braided: A Journey of a Thousand Challahs, one feels as if one is drinking from a spiritual fountain that allows a new wave of life to surge within them. This book offers both a recipe and a path to personal growth and healing. Packed with insight and wisdom, it is one of those rare books that every woman should read.”
—Readers' Favorite, five stars
“Ricanati's memoir with recipes is a well-written investigation into her maturation as a doctor, her growth as a wife and mother, and the increasing wisdom she gained while pondering Jewish rites and rituals.”
—Booklist, starred review
“‘I knead for my needs,’ the author insists—and readers are likely to join her.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“I smiled while reading this book—I couldn’t help it. It’s not about making challah healthy, it’s about challah-making as healthful. Buy this book for any friend and they’ll get it, they’ll smile, and they’ll learn why you honored them with it.”
—Mike Roizen, MD, four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of RealAge.com
“This is the perfect prescription for a happy life: slow down, be present, and bake challah. Beth Ricanati has taken the mindfulness movement to kitchens everywhere. This book inspires readers to practice being fully present with yourself and your friends and family during the most nurturing of times.”
—Suze Yalof Schwartz, author of Unplug: A Simple Guide to Meditation for Busy Skeptics and Modern Soul Seekers and CEO/founder of Unplug Meditation
“Beth Ricanati has written a unique book: part recipe, part health, with a whole lot of soul. Reading her book is like making a new friend—you feel transported to her California kitchen. A yummy, cozy and inspiring read.”
—Lori Palatnik, author, media personality, and founding director of The Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project
“This is not just a book about making bread. It is a book about making choices, and like a good challah is at times chewy, evocative, and a little sweet. Its wisdom transported me back to the kitchens of my grandmothers and the knowledge that in complicated times, the way forward is always the simple and beloved.”
—David Baum, PhD, DMin, speaker, coach, conversation architect, and author of Lightning in a Bottle and The Randori Principles
“A women’s wellness doctor who prescribes the practice of baking bread? I feel like this is exactly the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that is going to save the world right now.”
—Jennie Nash, author of The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer and founder of AuthorAccelerator.com
“Beth Ricanati’s book is like having coffee with a girlfriend: honest, interesting, and thoughtful. Part memoir, part cookbook, part health guide—but more than all of these, Braided is a book that will inspire you to dig deep, think about life, and make challah, maybe even at the same time.”
—Ruchi Koval, director of Jewish Family Experience and author of Conversations with God
“Some of my favorite moments in teaching American Jewish women’s history surround the home and the politics of gender and domesticity—a contemporary space that Beth Ricanati has reclaimed for herself and for all of us through the simple ritual of weekly challah baking. In class, my students discover that contemporary Jewish women can now choose and participate in ancient traditions and rituals in ways that empower them rather than control them. Ricanati's beautifully written story of challah, the joy of creating real food for those we love, and the healing power of being in the moment enlivens this precious inheritance, never more needed than now.”
—Marcie Cohen Ferris, Professor, American Studies Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“The book reads in part like a food memoir and in part like a love letter to the act of challah baking. After reading it, it is hard not to gather your own ingredients and immediately start kneading.”
—Rochelle Newman Rubinoff, JUF News
“Interspersed with anecdotes about her patients, accounts of her upbringing and schooling, and sidebars on nutrition, cooking tools and ingredients, [Braided] explains how the slow-paced, wondrous process of baking bread has enabled Ricanati to feel “present” in a fast-paced world, while also fostering a connection to her roots, other women, and her community.”
—Jennifer Rak, The Jewish Week, Food & Wine
“It is an inspiring and deeply hopeful story, centered by a deceptively simple task.”
—D. Ferrara, Story Circle Book Reviews
“I am enamored with this book. Not only do I love the easy and friendly style in which it is written . . . Reading her book puts you right there in the kitchen with her while you also gain deep respect for her journey as a physician, mother, and spouse.”
—Krysta Gibson, New Spirit Journal
2018-06-20
An atypical memoir about how one woman learned spiritual lessons through baking bread.Nearly every Friday for the past decade, debut author Ricanati, a Los Angeles-area doctor specializing in women's health, has baked challah bread. When she started, she was stressed and overworked, and she discovered that this baking process both rooted her in her Jewish faith and encouraged her to slow down and focus on the depth of her experience: "I could reconnect with myself and with other women," she writes. "I could find some happiness in this mixed-up, fast-paced world. I could, in other words, be present." In a sort of whistle-stop tour through her past, she convincingly argues that, for her, "Food is medicine." Whether she was writing a cookbook for the blind, creating a guide to eating disorders for a local hospital, or taking a cooking class during a lonely summer in Paris, she says that she was always acting on her belief that healthy comfort food was a way to care for herself and others. What's more, challah "is the ultimate soul food for me," she writes, as it forms an essential part of the Sabbath ritual. The 11 steps of making challah, as she lays them out here, effectively function as a metaphorical course in professional and spiritual discipline. Ricanati draws intriguing symbolic connections between the bread-baking process, her faith in God, and her busy life as a physician. In both baking and medicine, she notes, "mise en place" (putting everything in its place) is essential, as being organized defuses anxiety. The magical moment when the yeast comes to life, she says, brings to mind the first birth she observed. Waiting for the dough to rise, she writes, teaches her that God is in control; judging how much flour to add encourages flexibility; knowing when the bread is done requires patience. The book is impressively thorough, giving advice on every baking element from oil (canola) to flour (King Arthur brand, all-purpose), and she offers informative sidebars on sugar and the gluten-free craze."I knead for my needs," the author insists—and readers are likely to join her.
