London chef Abi Kaufman is particular about who she bakes her challah bread and butter pudding for. “Sometimes, I won’t serve it to people who won’t understand the significance of it,” she says. The recipe is a “sweet marriage” of three strands of her identity: The bread and butter pudding is British like her grandmother Joan, who moved to Israel and converted to Judaism. The challah is Jewish and a recipe her mother makes weekly for Shabbat in Zagreb, Croatia and the halva reminds her of Israel where she was born. 

When Abi was 12-years-old, her parents told her: “pack your bags.” Her family was moving to Croatia for her father’s job. “I think it’s the worst age to move — you think it’s the end of your universe,” Abi explains. “But, now I thank them every single day. It gave me access to the world.”

Living in Zagreb’s small Jewish community, “was the first time I realized being Jewish was special — or different,” she adds. Shabbat took on a deeper meaning for her family as her parents tried to keep traditions going outside of Israel. There were no bakeries that sold challah nearby — the closest option were small braided rolls — so her mom Naomi, who is a professional chef, started braiding and baking her own. “We celebrate [Judaism] through food in my family, and always have,” Abi explains. 

And while food was at the center of her family’s everyday life too, Abi didn’t set out to become a chef. She started in a science program, but quickly realized it wasn’t for her. Her mother encouraged her to switch paths and go to school for hospitality in Amsterdam. Abi fell in love with the cooking there and worked her way up to the kitchen at the famed Savoy hotel in London. 

In England, bread and butter pudding is a quintessential dessert that’s made year round as a smart and wonderful way to use up stale bread. In London, Abi started making her own version, swapping out white bread for challah and adding halva. The recipe brings together her family’s past and her present. 

Abi loves it so much that today, she says, “sometimes, I don’t even wait for the bread to get stale.”