When smells of rising dough waft out the door of New Orleans’ Ayu Bakehouse, the culprit might be a fresh baguette, a warm cinnamon roll, or a sheet-pan-sized bready alligator.
Make that a challahgator, a reptile-shaped loaf inspired by the challah centerpieces Ayu co-owner and head chef Kelly Jacques used to craft at a New York bakery. “But we needed something that feels correct for where we are,” she says. “I just slept on it. And then the next day I came running into the office, and I said to my business partner, Samantha, ‘What if it was an alligator?’ Then the name challahgator came, and I was like, We can’t not do this now.”
The team got to work crafting test batches of carb-filled crocodilians made from the traditionally Jewish bread. “It took us a couple of tries of holding up pictures of alligators and thinking, Wait, are the hands like this or like this? There was a little bit of tweaking, but otherwise it came together pretty fast,” Jacques says.
The result is a whopping three and a half pounds of golden-brown gatory goodness. The bakery started regularly selling them in September ahead of Rosh Hashanah, and they’ve quickly become a fan favorite. “We had somebody buy one and take it on an airplane with them. I’m pretty sure they had to buy another seat for it,” Jacques jokes.
Now, the bakery has the art of crafting challahgators down. First, they roll pounds of challah dough into six weavable strands. They braid these into the body of the gator, egg-wash it, and cut scores to give the dough a scute-like texture before cutting four plump gator feet.
“Challah is a dough for artists—it wants to be sculpted, it exists to be braided. It’s forgiving and not as sensitive as a sourdough. So it just really lends itself to this,” Jacques says.
For now, the gators come in two varieties: seeded and regular (although Jacques isn’t ruling out a Mardi Gras twist). On the former, perfectly toasted seeds reminiscent of small scales adorn the bread, while on the latter, the golden sheen of the egg-washed dough shines through. Regardless of the choice, “inside it’s a classic pillowy challah. So you get that egg flavor and a little bit of sweetness. It’s this soft, almost squishy bread just asking for a big slather of butter,” Jacques says.
The hearty loaves sell for thirty-six dollars, and each gator can serve around sixteen people, although there would be no judgment if a customer decided to gorge on a gator alone. “I would celebrate that person,” Jacques says.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas, Ayu will start accepting preorders for the baked gators and has already ramped up production as they’ve gained popularity. “We’re in a challahgator maximization process right now,” Jacques says. Still, because the hefty loaves are difficult to ship, they’ll only be available in the Big Easy. “It’s just another reason why everyone has to come to New Orleans,” she says.
Going into the holidays, Jacques hopes the gators can bring a bit of fun to any celebration. “It’s always nice to make something that brings a little joy. And it gives you something to talk about if you show up at Thanksgiving with this big gator in a box,” she says.
