Reena Baked It, a Toronto west-end micro-bakery, is selling loaves and donating a portion of her sales to charity.
Challah means a lot to many people, for many reasons––whether it's the centrepiece of your Shabbat dinner on Friday night, something you bake in a new oven to give the house the aroma of home or just the perfect bread that holds yours sandwich together. To Reena Newman, the visionary behind Reena Baked It, it's more than just bread.
"Challah is the bread of my childhood, and a treat I looked forward to every week. Now that I have two kids, I want to create that for them," says Newman. "So many of my childhood memories are tied to food, so I’ve been working on updating and repackaging the important ones for my kids."
Although you can never go wrong with a classic challah, Newman does much more than just that. She's been experimenting with flavours since June to put a twist of some of the breads we're all familiar with, such as salted Nutella and tahini challah, a dark chocolate, cherry and candied orange rind challah as well as one of her newer features––a cheddar, parmesan, za’atar and garlic challah.
In addition to elevating the classics, she's become admired for her beer bread, which sits somewhere between a traditional bread and a cake, making it the perfect loaf to snack on with your morning coffee.
Newman's challahs aren't just benefitting her, her children and anyone who's fortunate enough to buy them either. At the end of each month, Newman picks a charity to donate a portion of the proceeds to. For her, baking gives her wholeness, so she's made a point of giving back to those in need even if it's in a small way. So far she has raised over $2,500 for various charities. Eating carbs has never felt so rewarding.
If you want to get your hands on Reena's baked goods be sure to DM her weekly by Wednesday for her Friday pickup in the Roncesvalles neighbourhood––and do it quickly, because she's getting busy. More exciting resources are slated to come our way, like a web store to place all your orders.
