Dear rabbis,
Can Sefaradim make hamotzi on egg challah, or is only water challah acceptable?
Thank you.
Yes, its Hamotzi.
sorry - can you clarify this? Egg Challah is hamotzi even though it’s usually sweet?
Water or Egg Challah are both Hamotzi. The fact that it may be a little sweet does not change the fact that it is bread.
This applies to ‘mezonot bagels’ as well. They are all Hamotzi.
There is a major misconception that bread or bagels baked with a little apple juice or eggs would render the bread similar to cake and therefore mezonot. This is false and a misconception perpetuated by the bakers who label their bread as mezonot.
It starts with people being too lazy to wash their hands for bread and benching after eating. So they look for a short cut to make their bread a mezonot.
Bread is Hamotzi. Cake is a mezonot. People sit down to cake for dessert but never once have I seen anyone sit down to egg challah as dessert. It’s really that simple.
Rabbi Lasry,
My apologies in advance if I’m ignorant of something here, but why then, per Rabbi Abadi (per my recollection years ago), do we make an exception with egg matzah (ashira - which is baked with fruit juices/eggs), and say that this is mezonot?
Thanks.
The original question was about Challah and for Challah there is no difference between water, fruit juice, or eggs. All would require washing and Hamotzi. That which looks like bread, tastes like bread, feels like bread, and eaten like bread is actually bread.
Egg matzah on the other hand is potentially different and we will try to explain this topic more in depth shortly. The gist of the idea is that it has a lot less to do with what ingredients are included and a lot more to do with how its being eaten. Pizza is eaten to fill yourself and not as a dessert. Pizza is Hamotzi whether you eat a little or a lot. A cheese danish is eaten as a dessert/snack and therefore mezonot unless eating enough to be considered Kovea Seudah which would then require Hamotzi even on a cheese danish. So the question your posing is whether we consider egg matzah like bread in that it is only eaten when people sit down for a meal or whether we consider it more like a danish in the sense that people eat it as a snack and not when they sit down for a meal. (I have not seen people eat egg matzah as a snack.)
Either way this is a complex topic and the previous paragraph was just a small piece of the topic. It is by far not a complete explanation so do not deduce anything from my statement.
Hopefully we can expound on this to bring further clarity in the coming days.
What’s the berachah on an egg bagel? Cinnamon raisin bagel?
Hamotzie