The Origins of Challah - Mishnah Challah

(17) The Eternal spoke to Moses, saying: (18) Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them: When you come into the land to which I am taking you (19) and you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set aside a gift to the Eternal: (20) From the first kneading of dough, you shall give a challah as a gift; you shall set it aside as a gift like the gift from the threshing floor. (21) You shall make a gift to the Eternal from the kneading of dough, throughout the ages.

(1) Five species are subject to challah: wheat, barley, spelt, oat and rye. These are all subject to challah, and can be combined with one with another.

Five species are subject to challah - We learn about Challah from the Laws of Passover. For in Passover the matzah is called “the bread of affliction” (Deut. 16:3), and challah also speaks about bread: “and you eat of the bread of the land” (Num.15:19)

Just as the bread of Passover must be able to be leavened, so the bread for challah must be able to be leavened. And these five grains are the only ones that become leavened.

(4) The following are liable for tithes, but exempt from challah: rice, millet, poppy-seed, sesame seeds, kitniot, and anything less than five-fourths of a kav of grain, sponge-cakes, honey-cakes, dumplings, a cake [cooked] in a pan and medumma are exempt from challah.

(6) Five-fourths of a kav of flour are subject to challah...

(7) The [minimum] measure of challah is one twenty-fourth part of the dough... If a baker makes to sell in the market, and so too, if a woman makes to sell in the market, it is one forty-eighth.

(1) Produce from outside the of the land Israel that came into the land of Israel is subject to challah. If it went out from here to there: Rabbi Eliezer renders it liable, But Rabbi Akiva makes it exempt.

(10) Nittai of Tekoa brought challot from Bei Yitur but they did not accept from him. The people of Alexandria brought their challah from Alexandria, but they did not accept from them. The people from Mt. Tzevoim brought bikkurim prior to Shavuot, but they did not accept from them, on for it is written in the Torah: “And the festival of the harvest, the first-fruits of your labors, which you have sown in the field” (Exodus 23:16).

(11) Ben Antinos brought up bechorot from Babylon, but they did not accept from him. Joseph the priest brought first fruits of wine and oil, but they did not accept from him. He also brought up his sons and members of his household to celebrate the Little Passover in Jerusalem, but they turned him back, so that the thing should not become firmly fixed as an obligation...

A woman may separate challah [outside of Israel] and a child priest may eat it. And if there is no child priest available, she takes the challah with the top of a skewer [massa] and throws it in the oven, and then separates another piece of challah so that the Torah of challah should not be forgotten.

(4) And the Eternal said to Moses, “I will rain down bread for you from the sky, and the people shall go out and gather each day that day’s portion—that I may thus test them, to see whether they will follow My instructions or not. (5) But on the sixth day, when they apportion what they have brought in, it shall prove to be double the amount they gather each day.”

(5) You shall take choice flour and bake of it twelve loaves, two-tenths of a measure for each loaf. (6) Place them on the pure table before the Eternal in two rows, six to a row. (7) With each row you shall place pure frankincense, which is to be a token offering for the bread, as an offering by fire to the Eternal. (8) He shall arrange them before the Eternal regularly every sabbath day—it is a commitment for all time on the part of the Israelites. (9) They shall belong to Aaron and his sons, who shall eat them in the sacred precinct; for they are his as most holy things from the Eternal's offerings by fire, a due for all time.