TRADITION!:

For years, the secret to Carol Michael's grandmother's challah bread recipe was a mystery. Even after years of kneading the traditional Jewish loaves for her family's Friday shabbat dinners and the holidays, Tobye Hollander wouldn't reveal her recipe.

So the family came up with an ingenious ploy. They wrote to the food editor of the New York Times and asked the paper to profile Hollander and spotlight her challah recipe. Surely, they thought, that would get grandma to divulge the recipe.

"My mother said 'the only way I'm going to get that recipe is if I make her famous,'" Carol Michael, 69, recounted at the dining room table of her Brookline home Saturday afternoon.

The trick worked. Hollander gave the recipe up to a Times reporter. A clipping of the original 1971 article still hangs in the living room.

It was a good thing too, because five generations later Hollander's recipe, with a few modifications, is still serving her descendants.

On Saturday, the day before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, three generations of Michaels gathered to put the old recipe to the test once again.

"Foods are so much a part of the holiday," Carol said.

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