"What Baking Can Do" - An Interview with Dr. Beth Ricanati

com and check us out on social media for offers and discounts . Hi , I'm Nicole Kelly and this is Sheb ew in the City and today I'm talking to Dr Beth Ricanati . How are you doing today , doctor ?

We've created this kind of mythical character that comes and steals your challah and she pretends to be scared of it and it's very cute , but she gets challahs at home every Friday from school . Because I'm not a baker , so I'm very thankful for that , but we're going to talk a lot about challah today .

I thought it came in the plastic bag from the Jewish bakery you had a couple times a year and I did not have a bar mitzvah . Unfortunately , all of my kids have been bar and bar mitzvahed . I did attend Sunday school through ninth grade . I had a confirmation what they called it back then .

I don't know if they even still do that in reformed synagogues , but that was the extent then of my Jewish education , and it wasn't until I went off to college that I really started to learn more .

Yeah , though with what I'm about to go into , I'm sure she's going to spend a lot of time in Germany . I am about to embark on a graduate program in Holocaust and genocide studies , so I'm sure she'll end up in Germany at some point before 10th grade .

Yeah , I'm very excited with what I'll be able to do with the degree , but I'm a little overwhelmed , understandably .

We went to like you know the required Shabbats through Hebrew school , but not like extra holidays . Like I feel like I celebrate more holidays now than when I was a kid . I go to like everything . So what caused that transition and what was that ?

We were bringing two wildly different backgrounds together and in the beginning we were members of a reformed synagogue and we did not keep kosher . He grew up keeping kosher and then we had kids and that changed everything for us .

We began a journey when we had kids that continues to this day , where we have just been embracing more and more of our tradition and religion and background and heritage and we studied with more observant rabbis once the kids were born , studied with more observant rabbis once the kids were born and ultimately did join a conservative synagogue and sent the kids to

summer camp Jewish summer camp , overnight camp and I really came to hold on to Jewish ideas and thoughts as a tool for parenting . And that's really where it became really helpful , like when the kids were little . I mean now they're in college and beyond .

But when they were really like your daughter's age , but when they were , you know , sort of preschool-ish , I began to see the merits of a lot of Jewish teaching as a wonderful guide for parenting and it was such an easy path then to embrace and I've come to really love it . And that's where we are today . And we do keep kosher ish . Now .

I mean , well , we have , you know , we separate milk and meat and we don't have , uh , you know , we don't eat pork or shellfish , um , except , I must admit , when I travel . Sometimes I have a little linguine and clams , but we won't talk about .

Like our initial apartment we were in for eight years and we had a little countertop dishwasher and then our next place had a real dishwasher and laundry in the building and now we have everything . So I feel like I've made it , which is a weird , touch a corner , a weird like milestone for New Yorkers .

So I read that you majored in art history and undergraduate and for your undergraduate degree and then you decided to pursue medicine . That's a pretty extreme shift . What caused that ?

All of my clinical work in medical school went very , very well , because I knew how to look and how to see in a really different way than my biology and chemistry major colleagues or co-students .

The pivot became apparent , though , in college , because I was at school on the East Coast , having grown up in Cleveland , as I mentioned and it was the early 90s , late 80s , early 90s and I became aware of some women's health issues , that there were Supreme Court cases and things like that , and I had not known about any of this growing up in Ohio , and I

wanted to do something about it and I wanted to try and effect some change , and I have always thought that if you're going to try and change something , you have to actually get in there and change it .

So I thought if I had an MD , I could probably have a more of a leg to stand on in women's health than not , and I actually had always spent my whole childhood in one way or another helping other people .

I learned Braille as a child and volunteered at the Sight Center in Cleveland , which is an organization for the visually impaired and blind , and actually wrote with Stouffer's Food , wrote a cookbook for the blind in high school , and I always worked and volunteered in hospitals . So it was no surprise in hindsight but hindsight is always 20-20 .

And if you had told me when I entered college and I went in with the idea of majoring in art history which is sort of interesting to go in with the same major that one goes out with , but anyway if you had told me then that I would be a science geek , I would not have known who you were talking about . But it's been a great combination , I think .

And also then it made it really easy as I know we'll get into later but I pivoted yet again and so the stage was set early on that I was obviously going to be doing lots of different things that were outside of the box .

same way . We moved to New York to pursue musical theater and now . I'm going to be studying the Holocaust , so very , very , very different . But again , looking back , a lot of it makes sense and no one seems surprised . And I've also read that a lot of medical schools .

They like students who aren't necessarily pre-med because it brings a well-rounded doctor out of the program . So if you're interested in going to medical school , maybe you can minor in something science-y and major in history or art or something .

So I went to med school with that as a focus and I trained at Columbia actually in New York and practiced in their women's health center for a couple years and then , when we moved back home to Cleveland , I started at the Cleveland Clinic in their women's health center . I'm an internist by training , just to give background , so I take care of adults .

And after I had been in the women's health Center for about five years at the Cleveland Clinic , they had a new department called the Wellness Institute that they were setting up and establishing . Treat chronic disease through lifestyle . So think food , exercise and stress management .

And those were things that I was becoming increasingly more passionate about , because no matter how many women I saw a day in my clinic , invariably we always were talking about did you eat breakfast and how are you managing your stress ? Have you moved ? Today , I mean , I was having the same conversation again and again and again .

So the idea that I could be involved on a larger scale and have greater impact was extremely exciting to me , and I also really believe in the power of lifestyle modification to treat and to prevent disease . And the good news is that now and now it's 15 years later it's certainly more mainstream .

Then I felt like some people thought I was crazy , but we did incredible work .

So Lifestyle 180 was a program that was set up to take patients who had what I like to think of as low-hanging fruits what I like to think of as low-hanging fruit , so heart disease and high blood pressure , high cholesterol , diabetes , obesity , even some cancers and put them through a program where they it was a six-week program .

They came twice a week and had nutrition , exercise and stress management classes . We measured everything . We measured labs , we knew about their medications , we ate all of their biometrics , so their blood pressure , their heart rate and their weight , and we also measured behavioral . We looked at different scales , right , how stressed were they ?

And it was so exciting to see over that six weeks and then we followed them actually for a year . So the program in its total was a year and we were were ecstatic because it worked . I mean people , uh , they felt better , which was so exciting to me , and they were able to move the needle on all of it .

So people who were on medicine were able to lower their medicine and sometimes even come off of their medicine , which was really cool . They improved all of their lab functions . So if they had high cholesterol , it got better . If their hemoglobin A1C , which is a marker for diabetes , was elevated , it went down . Their weight went down .

Their blood pressure went down . It was really , really gratifying to see that , yes , you can change what you eat , you can think about how you're going to move , you can think about how you're going to manage your stress and you can therefore have a really positive impact .

We know , nicole , that 75% , 80% depending which study you want to look at of chronic diseases are impacted by lifestyle .

That is a huge number , which I find really exciting because it means that we have so much control , no matter what's going on in the world and God knows , this year there's a lot going on in the world but we still can stop and , in my case , make hollow , which we'll talk about , but we can stop and think every day how we're going to impact our own health .

Which case make hollow , which we'll talk about , but we can stop and think every day how we're going to impact our own health , which therefore , of course , impacts everybody around us . It have a huge ripple effect .

We'll just talk about food which , for better or for worse , I love food , so at some point you then ended up moving to .

I thought it would be easier to move at a younger age and what a treat to come to a completely new environment . I have to say the weather here is lovely being in Cleveland . My husband called me one day at work about the opportunity and it was winter time in Cleveland and it was great from the grounds to the heavens and gosh .

I really don't miss that , quite frankly .

SoCal girl , but a lot of my friends and family are very Southern California and they're never going to leave , so I definitely respect that . So let's jump into um .

What what I really want to talk about is your book called Braided Journey of a Thousand Halas . How did that happen ? You know let's , let's I want the whole story . Did you start baking hala and then write a book ? Had you been baking hala already ? Like I want the let's , I want the whole story .

Did you start baking challah and then write a book because you've been baking already ? Like I want the whole I want the whole spiel .

That was not a common moniker in our vocabulary and I certainly didn't know how to talk about it and nobody around me was talking about it . To say I was stressed out would be an understatement . We had three little kids . Both of our families were there .

I was trying to be a present mom and a present family member and a wife and a spouse and all these things and go to work . It was hard for me . I really struggled . And about this time during the Jewish New Year , a girlfriend of mine from my New York days called and we were chatting .

She was wishing me Happy New Year , asking me what I was doing with the kids You're so cute , I can barely brush my teeth these days and get out the door in the morning . I'm not doing it , I don't know what we're doing and she said oh , you should make challah .

I just came from a mommy and me class at the JCC on the Upper West Side of Manhattan , it's super easy . I was like , yeah , right Back to the comment I made earlier . I had no idea people actually made challah and I'd certainly never worked with yeast , so the idea that I was going to bake something was almost laughable .

But she kept talking about it and it really did sound cool , for lack of a better description and so I tried it that week and I have to say , nicole , it changed my life . I stood at the kitchen counter in Cleveland , I was home alone and I just had my hands in a bowl of dough trying to make challah .

I was not on my beeper , I wasn't answering a page , I wasn't worrying about a patient and I wasn't worrying about my kids . I just was trying to mix flour and sugar in a bowl . And then the crazy thing so I'd never baked bread . So I didn't understand what was going to happen . When you actually bake bread , which is your house , becomes a home .

That smell , that aroma , it's just , it's magical . And there I was a couple hours later , enveloped in the smell , and I took those lopsided loaves out of the oven I'm better now at braiding and they look real like I had made something .

And my kids were so excited , and my husband , who obviously appreciated the tradition a lot more than I did at that time , was incredulous and it was so cool . I did it again the next week and , before I knew it , nicole , I was trying to find a half an hour every Friday to make the dough .

I was trying to find a half an hour every Friday to make the dough , and I did for years and I ultimately realized I had learned a lot of really important life lessons . At this point , we were now living in LA and I thought , okay , I'm clearly not the only stressed out mom on the block and I've learned a lot from this ritual .

I want to share that , and that's what became the genesis for the book . And the book came out in the end of 2018 . And since then , it's just had this incredible life of its own , and I've been able to share it with people all over the country . I now lead workshops . The great news is we're back in person .

It started virtually during COVID , but I now get to travel and make Hama with people . I'm a physician , right , I'm not a baker , so I talk about this and I think about it .

I write about it with that as my lens , where I'm taking this ancient Jewish ritual , which is so powerful , and I'm overlaying it with these ideas and thoughts that I've learned as a physician .

I talk about the importance of mindfulness and being present and managing our stress , and why building community is so important to us , and I found that the more I do this , the more I realize exactly how important it is to do this . It's been a very easy pivot for me .

I have lots of questions . So you said that you , you know , after the book was published , you started doing workshops and speaking engagements . How did that start ? And you know , if I was , you know , to take a workshop with you , what would I expect from that ?

I mean , I went on a little mini tour and it really was , honestly , was COVID , so we had been home a week , the kids were back home from college , we're all in our house in California .

It's tight quarters and I had had the fortune in this past , in the year before and as the book was getting out of meeting all kinds of fabulous people in the holoverse , as my husband calls it , which I think is beautiful .

I started that Friday , a week or two in quarantine , offering hollow workshops , and what we do in a workshop is still pretty similar to what I did then . I mean , it's just , it's evolved for sure . But essentially , to answer your question , you know what do you expect at one of my workshops ?

What we do is we make dough together and in the hour that we're together , I talk the whole time . And I'm talking about while we're getting our hands in the bowls of dough and while we're together as a group , having this tactile experience with this ancient Jewish ritual .

I talk about the importance of a ritual , I talk about a tactile experience , I talk about being present , I talk about having a way to manage your stress this is mine , you can pick whatever you'd like but why ? That actually matters to our health because , again , I'm coming at this as a physician . And when we're done .

We have a bowl of dough I like to think of it as a bit like a television show I bring out another bowl of dough that I've made so I can demonstrate braiding and baking and talk about that , but people go home with a bowl of dough that then they can braid and bake at home .

Sometimes I do a longer workshop , depending on the organization , and we do actually do some programming while the dough rises and then we come back and braid it . People go home with a loaf , but you don't go home with finished baked bread .

In general , I have done this at certain facilities where we actually do longer workshops , where we do bake it , but the basic workshop , the one that I do all the time and I've done a hundred of these is we make dough together and have this experience , which I find really empowering .

And what's been particularly gratifying , nicole , since a year ago , since October 7th , is that I not only am working with Jewish groups , but I'm working with all kinds of groups .

I work with churches , I've worked with a law firm , I've worked with corporations , I've worked with a lot of schools and medical schools and universities , and what's so powerful and impactful for me is to build bridges and to work with people of different faiths and different backgrounds and come together , because I think that's how we're going to move forward and

have hope .

It's a whole mess , like I've had instructors re-braid for me . So there's that . But I have found other things in my life that have become meaningful Jewish rituals , which I think are very helpful

. But what do you think are the health benefits of because you say you're coming from this as a physician the health benefits of meaningful rituals , whether it's baking challah or if you're not Jewish , doing something else or going to synagogue on Fridays or whatever that is , what are the health benefits of that ?

We learned a lot about Western medicine and the body . We didn't necessarily talk so much about the connection between the mind and the body . I've come to really appreciate alternative and complementary medicine together with Western medicine . I think that they work very , very well together .

They work very , very well together and having a sense of belonging and community and ways to manage your stress significantly impact your health , and now we have actually data and research that support that .

So when you have a meaningful ritual so , for example , me making challah when I stop and I make challah on Fridays and I take a deep breath and I am there and present at the kitchen counter , I'm having an impact literally on my body and I'm calming down and being present . That's great for so many .

It's great for my heart , it's great for my mind , it's great for my mood . It doesn't get any better than that .

So you just start , and some weeks , even now , like I made a lot of challah . Last week , we were back in Ohio for Rosh Hashanah and I made a lot of challah , which was great fun . Some of it was sublime . I'll just pat myself on the back and there was a batch I made that just wasn't Nicole . I felt so awful . Everyone thought it was fine .

No one said anything , but I was like yuck , this is not my standard . I don't know what happened . I don't know it was the same ingredients . Sometimes that's just life . So how do you do it ? You just start , just get out the ingredients , put them on the kitchen counter , take a deep breath .

And it actually took me a while the first year or so that I made challah , I was terrified and I didn't alter the recipe . One iota Abby had sent me the recipe .

I copied it exactly , didn't change anything , and it didn't always work though , and I finally realized after about a year oh , you know , I could adapt , I could modify , I could play with it , and I have found that when I hold back a little of the flour and then see what the dough needs , and one of the big lessons I learned is that you can always add

more , but you can't always take out . I mean , obviously the whole point is that's a life lesson and once I started doing that , so that is probably the biggest factor . Now , when I make , I play with the amount of dough and sometimes it changes .

I mean , you're familiar with southern california , so two years ago we had horrible wildfires that were close enough to where I live that that the air was definitely wonky and it happened to be on a friday and the joe as a result was crazy like I added so much more flour to compensate some of the the workshops that I've done .

I've had participants who are in high altitude and they've had to modify on , for example . That's another classic example that I can give you right off the bat . But I think actually I was in Ohio last week and the air is different and the water is different than it is here and I think that's also what would happen .

So my husband's the cook and he just has this really great way of like , like you said , playing with things . But baking is , I think , scary to him , though .

Our kitchen is bigger now , so I think we're getting a KitchenAid and I'm my , my friend , who's like a real baker , was like well , obviously , like you need to start baking , but I think that's one of the things that scares him and definitely me about baking is the change with dough and you know , like the air and the water , like all of that is that's one

of the reasons that New York bagels are so good is the water . So if you are , it's the water and the pizza and that's . It's the sourdough in San Francisco . Same thing . It has to do with the water , so with baking , there's much more that goes into it . So I , I , I like how , I really like how you've compared it to life , how there's challenges .

It's going to be different but , you just have to do it , and I , before I talked , to you , I , you know who knew making baking challah was was so deep and philosophical .

I do and you talked about how you become more observant . So , with all this challah , what does Shabbat look like at your house ? Do you have a lot of people over ? Is it more of a personal family experience ? Is it sometimes just you and your husband , if you say your ?

Now that they're not here we've actually been very intentional about it , because it's so easy to just not have Shabbat . I don't live in the community , so to speak , so it's not . You know , everyone around me isn't .

That would not be a good idea . But we do have Shabbat every week and usually it's with other people , which is very meaningful for both of us at this point .

Oh , that's beautiful . Yes , so you had mentioned October 7th and how things have changed , at least from your workshops and challah making . Can you kind of delve into that a little bit more , or how things have changed personally for you since October 7th ?

I think everybody who you know feels affected by what happened can say that their life changed at least in some way .

We now , on Shabbat , every Friday , we light three candles , because we always only lit two , and now we light a third for the hostages . We started that immediately . For a while we were saying extra prayers also on Friday night . I always now oh , actually , let me backtrack .

So one of the lovely things I do when I make challah , which I've been doing for years , that I was taught , actually , when I got to make challah in Israel , which was so cool , but anyway , I learned about making challah in the merit of somebody or something and bringing more intention to the experience .

So since October 7 , one of the , at the beginning , when I start to make challah , I always think about it every week . You know in whose merit am I going to make this batch , and I always now add in the hostages , and it just now add in the hostages and it just .

It brings me a little solace and I actually do believe in the power of prayer , so I think it . I think it helps . Interestingly for me , since that time I have felt more connected to my community and it's been really . That has been a silver lining to all of this , and a really lovely silver lining .

And then I had an opportunity this summer I don't know if you know about this book yet it just came out , but I had an opportunity to be a to participate in an anthology that was released as an ebook and an audio book on October 1st , called On being Jewish Now , and the paperback version is coming out November 1st and there are 75 authors and advocates who

have written about . We all wrote a short essay about anything post-October 7th and the book is divided into all kinds of categories Some are joyous and some are sad and everything in between , and to be involved in experiences like that has also really been impactful for me .

So brand new , and I was a guest on her podcast , which was super fun , and we actually made challah together here in uh la , and then I've done a couple events with her over the years since then .

So she reached out in uh in july to ask if I would I think it was july um to ask if I would be be able to do this , and it was like , of course , mean . This is just a beautiful , beautiful thing to have come into being . I'm really thrilled about it , and I wrote about Hala , of course , but what I wrote about was coming together as community .

So I mentioned a bit before how I make hollow with all different types of people and particularly , I'm leaning into that in a big way post October 7 . So I wrote about what the ritual means to me , but then also I highlighted one of the experiences that I've had during the year . These are short essays , by the way , they're all under 1000 words .

These are short essays .

The audio book is really great because most of us read our own pieces .

I didn't know that about myself . The things we learn , um , I do enjoy it , and what I really enjoy are other people's stories and sharing other people's stories . So so there might be . There might be another book in me , which would be super fun We'll see and I'm really enjoying the workshops , so that will continue for now .

I'm doing this at this time , but now I'm working with organizations , institutions , you know , whomever so , to participate in a workshop . At this point it's through you know , fill in the blank organization , your synagogue , your school , your whatever , your office , your whomever , and they bring me in and it's great .

I work , you know , all over the place and I've even now gone out of the country to do it , which is fun . Um , so how do you do that ? You reach out to me . So you reach out to me either through my website , which is just my name , bethricanadamdcom , or you find me on Instagram or Facebook and , uh , also my name on Instagram , beth Rickonati MD .

And we work together and set it up , which is really fun .

I mean , when I was younger I had a list a mile long of things I wanted to do and be , but I don't regret not doing them .