challah

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Bring the gift of knowledge home for the holidays with the 
Eleventh Edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?c11.htm&1
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The Word of the Day for December 8 is:

challah   \HAH-luh (the initial "H" is also frequently pronounced as a velar 
fricative)\   noun
     : egg-rich yeast-leavened bread that is usually braided or twisted before 
baking and is traditionally eaten by Jews on the Sabbath and holidays

Example sentence:
     Upon returning home for the winter break, Ari was delighted to smell 
freshly baked challah.

Did you know?
     When English speakers first borrowed "challah" from Yiddish, they couldn't 
quite settle on a single spelling, so the word showed up in several forms; 
"challah," "challa," 
"calloth," "challot," "hallah," "halloth," and "hallot" were all common enough 
to merit inclusion in _Webster's Third New International Dictionary, 
Unabridged_. But only the variants "challah," "challa," and "hallah" continue 
to show up regularly enough to have found a place in smaller abridged 
dictionaries.