Baking an Impact: Challah Back Girls Celebrates Five Years

Challah Back Girls is celebrating five years of baking with a mission. Founded in 2020 in Teaneck, New Jersey, Challah Back Girls was born when four siblings found themselves back home in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. What began as challah donations for frontline healthcare workers quickly evolved into a business with a conscience.

Siblings Sara, Marni, Hannah, and Eliana explain, “We sought to connect this ancient culinary tradition with our desire to support building a more compassionate, just, and equitable world. Challah Back Girls uses challah as a powerful symbol of change and opportunity to break bread with diverse communities.”

Embracing the value of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), Challah Back Girls contributes a portion of their proceeds to various organizations in need (cleverly referred to as “doughnations”). And with challah flavors like Apple Cinnamon Sugar, Birthday Cake, and Coffee Crumb, it’s a purchase you can feel good about in more ways than one.

Leah Grossman: Mazel tov on five years! How did you celebrate this exciting milestone?

Challah Back Girls: Thank you so much! It’s surreal to think that what started as a small family project during a time of deep uncertainty has grown into a global movement braided with community, joy, and justice.

To mark our fifth birthday, we hosted a range of celebratory gatherings that reflect what Challah Back Girls™ is all about: collaboration, compassion, and carb-loving community. We recently led a challah bake at GatherDC’s townhouse in Washington, DC, and hosted an intimate Shabbat dinner party to honor the roots and recipes of how and why we started.

We basically kicked off the birthday celebrations last month with National Challah Day on May 2 (an official holiday we proudly established in 2024!) and throughout May and June have emphasized some bite-sized highlights of the importance of Jewish American Heritage Month, Pride Month, AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander) Heritage Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month—so in many ways, we’ve been celebrating for weeks alongside our incredible Challah Back Squad!

And most meaningfully, we’re recommitting to our mission: using challah as a vehicle for connection, understanding, and collective action—a delicious expression of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) in action.

LG: How special that all four siblings came together to start this business. Was baking challah a tradition in your home growing up?

CBG: It was—though of course, not on this scale! Our mom (who I call my momager) had been baking challah for as long as we could remember, and she passed down not just the recipe on a laminated index card (so adorable), but the value of what it meant to pause and reflect heading into Shabbat. Challah wasn’t just food in our home—it was an intentional ritual and often a conversation starter (usually about which flavor ruled that week).

During the early days of the pandemic, we didn’t even realize it at the time, but baking together again (probably for the first time since we were kids) became a way to ground ourselves in something familiar and nourishing during such a painful time of isolation and sadness. What started as this act of comfort quickly rippled into the community at large. We began sharing loaves with frontline healthcare workers, then with neighbors, and soon heard stories of our challah reaching elders living alone who hadn’t seen family in months.

One day someone asked if we could ship the challah—so we did. Another day someone asked if we could provide dough for their parent association at school—so we found a way. Sometime later, someone asked us to send pre-measured challah baking kits to their 100+ person remote staff nationwide so we could facilitate a workshop virtually—and we hopped on that too. Each conversation led to new chapters over the last five years, and I absolutely swoon over learning about—and meeting—the evolving needs (almost said kneads…) of the Challah Back fam!

LG: Tell me about the family dynamic—what are each of your strengths and contributions to the overall operation?

CBG: Let’s just say we all bring different ingredients to the mix—and it works!

While I (Sara) run Challah Back Girls full-time—leading strategy, building partnerships, creating content, and managing operations—my siblings remain deeply connected to the heart of this work in their own capacity. Whenever our schedules align, they’ll travel with me to lead workshops across the world. Hannah probably joins most often (she hates to miss a party), and we’ve most recently braided together in CA, NJ, NY, and DC, and are heading to Boston and Maine later this summer!

In fact, Hannah really kicked all of this off. She’s always been the family’s resident baker and, during the early pandemic, was finishing her final semester of university remotely. The unexpected downtime led her back into baking, and she’s ultimately the one who taught me that measuring the yeast correctly is no yolk—it’s crucial.

Marni brings strong thought leadership and helps us navigate complex topics with care, depth, and nuance. They live in Boston now, but are always a call away when we need another eye or perspective on something meaningful.

Eliana, the youngest Loffman, is our behind-the-scenes powerhouse! She helps with inventory, packaging, and data analysis regularly, and often joins me for events as well. Over the five years, she and I have led a slew of BBYO workshops together, visited public schools to introduce challah and Jewish tradition to students—most of whom had never met someone Jewish before—and braided connections with people ages 2 to 102. We even crossed the border to bring Challah Back joy to Canada! As a current business student at Rutgers, Eliana is essentially turning Challah Back Girls into her ongoing case study—which I very much appreciate for the quality control alone.

At the end of the day, we challenge each other, support each other, and we laugh A LOT.

LG: It’s so nice to see a business that’s giving back to the community. Can you tell us about some of the organizations you’ve “doughnated” to? What has the response been both inside and outside of the Jewish community?

CBG: Giving back has always been at the core of what we do and fully baked into our mission! Whether it shows up through direct fundraising efforts, collaborative events, shared platforms, or featured flavors and products, our “doughnations” are as diverse and intentional as the organizations Challah Back Girls supports.

Since day one, we’ve committed portions of our proceeds, time, and resources to organizations doing essential work in racial justice, mental health, reproductive rights, food insecurity, education equity, LGBTQIA+ support, combating antisemitism, and more. We’ve amplified over 70 diverse grassroots organizations, including The Loveland Foundation, JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), Everyone Home DC, JDC, the Asian American Federation, Harlem Grown, and Jewish Women International, among many others.

What makes each partnership so meaningful is how uniquely it’s curated. Every collaboration reflects the mission, vision, and vibe of the organization or brand we’re working with. It’s all about mutual uplift, aligned values, and collective impact. Highlighting these changemakers and redirecting our audience to their work is one of the most powerful and fulfilling parts of what we do. It really opens minds, builds empathy, and broadens what people see as possible, both within and beyond the Jewish community.

The response has been so deeply affirming. Inside the Jewish community, people have embraced our vision of braiding tradition with justice and engaging with new, and sometimes uncomfortable, perspectives. And beyond it, we’ve been moved by how many people see themselves reflected in our work, even if they’ve never heard of challah before.

That’s really what we’ve come to believe is the beauty of bread: it’s unifying, warm, and always makes space at the table. In every loaf we bake and every partnership we build, we’re guided by the value of Tikkun Olam—the belief that even small, local acts can be woven into the world in meaningful ways.

Challah is a meaningful offering for outreach and connection—it’s clear the traditional braided bread has the power to feed our communities in a myriad of ways (and in a variety of delicious flavors).

To Sara, Marni, Hannah, and Eliana—thanks for baking the world a better place, one challah at a time. Your honorable mission embodies the powerful sentiment that can be found on your merchandise (and perhaps my favorite of your adorable bread puns): Together we rise.

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Challah Back Girls ships challah nationwide and merch globally. For orders and more information, visit their website.