Hafrashas Challah For Sourdough

 

Question:

I’m trying to calculate the correct measurement for Hafroshas Challah, in this article you convert the volume measurement of kabeitzah into weight, but if we stick with volume, can we say a beizah is about 75ml, therefore 43 1/5 bz = 3456 ml = 3.65 quart ?

Calculating in volume is useful for me especially when making sourdough and the amount of flour may be in the safek bracha range but with added starter dough you can clearly end up with maybe a 5-quart bowl full of dough after you’ve mixed everything and ready to take challah.. that would be with a bracha, yes?

 

Answer:

I’m not sure what you are trying to say and accomplish. The shiur for challa is in the FLOUR not the Dough. In other words, although the challa is separated only after the dough is made, you need a shiur of flour before all the added ingredients. The reason why we commonly convert it to weight is because most flours are sold by weight. However, different varieties of flour (whole wheat, spelt etc.) have different weight vs volume conversion ratios. Other factors that will influence the conversion ration include temperature, moisture, storage. Sometimes it is advisable to measure by volume and not weight, or to calculate the conversion based on your particular flour.

I hope this clarifies things a bit, please reply if you need more help understanding the halacha.

 

Follow-up:

Thank you for your response. Yes, that makes more sense.

But how do we sourdough? where you have starter… here is a typical example:

You “feed” the starter dough the night before baking with an amount of flour, less than 1lb, but let’s say 3/4lb but may be as little as 100 grams. Then the next day, you may take 3lbs flour and mix it with about 50% of the above starter dough — this may yield that 5-quart dough.

Does the flour added the night before and, in the starter, add to the flour we use before baking to taking challah?

 

Answer:

The flour that you add the night before does add up. The flour in the starter dough only adds up if it was made by a Yid and challa was not separated from it yet. If not, and there is a shiur in the new dough, one should combine the 2 doughs, and separate challa only from the “new” dough.

 

הרי משנה ערוכה היא אשר השאור מצטרף לשיעור ה’ רבעים, ונפסק בשו”ע יו”ד שכד, ג. אבל ראה שם סי”א ובש”ך סקכ”א בדין שאור של פטור.

 

 

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