Isaiah,

Interesting halachic question you have posed. Certainly, this mixes the tradition with reasonably new discoveries that all of the biblical grains, except oats, is toxic to celiacs. (Notwithstanding that some celiacs cannot tolerate oats. That presents other halachic challenges.)

I'm not Orthodox, but I have a proposal.

Challah is supposed to be something joyous. Except for Passover when challah is matzoth and can be 100% oats, the expectation for challah would be a delicious bread. If you were to make a challah using eggs, sugar, yeast, only oat flour and maybe some xanthan gum, the result would probably not be joyous. So, I'd like to temporarily turn your question around: How much oats could you put into a mixture of flours and starches and still have a very wonderful and palatable result? Given that information, it would seem that you could pose a question: "I have experimented with making challah, and from my experiments, the maximum practical percentage of oats is X. Does this fulfill the mitzvah of taking challah?" Of course you will get many answers. Some Orthodox do not even accept oat matzoth as acceptable for Passover. But let's skip that fringe for now.

From a practical standpoint, I have experimented with bread, and I can add 1 cup of alternative ingredients to a 3-1/2 cup bread recipe. There is some depredation in quality, but the additives were interesting - amaranth and flax in my experiment - and it made up for the texture deviation from quality artisan white bread. I haven't yet tried oats, but that will be a future experiment. I plan to substitute maple syrup for honey, and ground-up McCann's instant oatmeal for amaranth and flax in experiment 11 in http://home.comcast.net/~vhdolcourt/bread   .  Of course, this isn't challah which should be richer.

My two cents,

Vic - Sunnyvale, CA



--- In allergicjews@yahoogroups.com, "ibenjamin816" <isaiah.benjamin@...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know the requirements for how much of a challah must be
> made of the "five grains" (rye, spelt, barley, wheat or oats) in order
> for it to fulfill the commandment to eat challah? And how this would
> translate into the mitzvah of *taking* challah? (I.E. Would you need
> to separate more from the challah dough to burn?) This is a question
> I'm asking on behalf of myself and also another celiac who are
> interested in being able to fulfill these mitzvot but can't figure out
> how much of the challah recipe would need to consist of GF oat flour
> in order for everything to be halachically correct. Is anyone
> knowledgeable about this, or has anyone asked such a question of a rabbi?
>
> Thanks
>