This miniature challah bread is only 4 inches (10cm) in length and is made of marzipan by Oppenheimer Ltd., Jerusalem. It is kosher and its packaging bears the hechshers of the Badatz Eida Chareidis, Israel and the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem.

Take a piece of bread dough, roll and pat it into a disk, poke a hole through it and you have a zero, O, which is a symbol for nothing. Apply a 180 degree twist around a diameter and you have the symbol for infinity, ∞, i.e. everything. Somewhere in the mathland between nothing and everything lies a region inhabited by plaits, braids, knots ... and challah breads.
 
While the symbol for zero may be represented by a bagel, that quintessential Jewish soul food may also help to define the symbol for infinity. A plane surface which intersects a toroid (bagel) in a particular way creates an internal surface which is called "lemniscate" and which defines the familiar symbol, ∞. Thus the humble bagel provides symbols for something without a beginning or an end, for nothing and everything. A great rabbi once said of the bagel, "turn it, turn it, for everything is in it."
 
Plaiting and knotting have many expressions within the ritual objects of the Jewish faith:

• tallis and tallis katan: tzitzit
• tefilin: the knots in the straps close to the phylacteries
• tefilin: the winding of the straps on the left or right forearm
• Shabbat: havadalah candles
• Sukkot: the holder (keshel, made of plaited palm leaves) into which the lulav (palm branch), aravot (willow) and hadassim (myrtle) are inserted
• Sukkot: the small loops of plaited palm leaf which hold the lulav fronds together
• Menorah and chanukiah: many instances of plaited arms and endless knots may be found in examples of 18th and 19th century CE Jewish papercuts. [more]

• 2-twist: shofar, bagel, macaroni stick
• 3-braid: two-hole button, lemniscate, washing cup (netilat yadaim) with two loop handles
• 4-braid:
• 5-braid: four-hole button
• 6-braid:
• 9-braid: penny whistle
• 10-braid: violin
• 12-braid: seven button shirt with double cuffs

• a concise yet explicit description of the loaf's braiding which may be used to replicate the loaf
• Assume some kind of plaiting machine
• computer languages such asBASIC or C++
• a terse computer language such as APL
• the minimum number of parameters from which the precise plaiting procedure may be deduced.

At its simplest, plaiting involves the twisting of strands around each other according to a scheme and for a specified number of iterations. On this web-site the twists are notated by a two-part number string, sd, which encodes the spine (s) around which the twist revolves and the direction (d) of the twist; e.g. 10 (spine 1, clockwise), 31 (spine 3, anti-clockwise), etc.   Strand: a cylinder of dough between about one and two centimeters in diameter and about two hand-breadths (about 20 centimeters) in length.   Spine (s): the logitudinal axis between two adjacent strands of dough. The total number of spines = total number of strands minus 1. Usually a number in the range 1-11. Twisted strands form a helix around their spine.   Direction (d): may be 0 or 1, where 0 = clockwise and 1 = anti-clockwise. Zero was chosen for clockwise because it, to me anyway, resembles an analogue clock face.   Iteration (i): the steps in plaiting a challah. Each iteration will have one or more twists. A positive integer smaller than about twenty. Challot for general use do not require more than about six or eight iterations.   Handedness: on this web-site left and left-hand are identical in meaning and right and right-hand are identical in meaning. In this context right does not mean correct.   Over-under: plaited strands generally pass over a strand and then under the next strand, i.e. over-under. Interesting patterns also result from two-over then one-under.

Direction: clockwise, d = 0 Starting from the top, the left-hand strand crosses the right-hand strand.

Direction: anti-clockwise, d = 1 Starting from the top, the right-hand strand crosses the left-hand strand.