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Yaakov Bineth is offering something new this week for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at his Montreal Kosher Bakery: brioche-style challah, sweetened with a topping of brown sugar, raisins and almonds.

It's an upscale turn for Montreal Kosher, a bakery where Jewish dietary laws are still strictly observed.

On any given Friday, the bakery - in an eclectic west-end neighbourhood where tradition still reigns among many Jews - sells out of the traditional egg breads in the hours before the Sabbath. Men in black hats jostle with women in yoga pants for the last few loaves.

But even here, consumers now want innovation.

So Mr. Bineth, like more and more bakers who cater to a largely Jewish clientele, is doctoring his challah recipes for Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown tonight. Mr. Bineth is producing braided breads made from whole wheat and spelt and is even adding gourmet embellishments such as hazelnuts and dark chocolate.

"People were asking," says Mr. Bineth of his updated challahs. "So we tried something new."

Other bakers say they are being prompted by growing concerns about health to change their traditional ways. Some have started using whole wheat flour - a controversial product in the baking world, where too much of the darker flour is thought to ruin the bread's fluffy texture.

The rich bread is part of ancient Jewish ritual on the Sabbath and most Jewish holidays. Meals begin with a blessing over two loaves.

Traditionally, bakers make a round version for Rosh Hashanah, representing the cycle of the year.

Raisins and extra honey could be added to symbolize the sweetness of the New Year - many families also dip chunks of challah in honey to reinforce the point.

Typical challah dough is made from flour, yeast and egg, and is sweetened with brown sugar or honey. The dough is glazed with a mixture of egg and sugar, giving the crust a hard, shiny exterior to contrast with the soft bread inside, and is often sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Adding eggs and sugar makes the bread special for the Sabbath and differentiates it from bread made for the rest of the week with just flour and water, says Shawna Goodman-Sone, a cooking instructor and editor of the kosher cookbook Panache: Montreal's Flair for Kosher Cooking.

"The whole idea of challah," says Ms. Goodman-Sone, "is that it's supposed to be something decadent."

Bakers at Boulangerie Le Fournil, an artisanal bakery owned by three sisters in Montreal's tony Westmount, decided to increase the sweetness of their challahs further by adding combinations of apples, honey, currents, golden raisins and hazelnuts.

The Friedman sisters got the idea to embellish challah two years ago after making a French bread with apricots and hazelnuts. Their clients loved the sweet and savoury combination.

To Robyn Friedman, a co-owner, adding fruit to challah also made sense since apples dipped in honey are traditionally part of the Rosh Hashanah meal.

"It's tradition with a twist," Ms. Friedman says. "It's acceptable to our clients who want something familiar."

Last year, the sisters sold over 800 challahs, both traditional and gourmet, for meals celebrating the Jewish New Year. This week, they are introducing a chocolate challah with dark chocolate and hazelnuts.

Bernie Good, owner of St. Urbain Bagel bakeries in Toronto, is one of a few bakers who now makes a version of both the braided Shabbat challah and the round Rosh Hashanah bread with only whole-wheat flour, embellished with a streusel topping composed of a layer of brown sugar, cinnamon and butter. He compensates by adding a little more yeast to make the bread rise.

Donna Silver, a long-time client of Mr. Good's, says the whole-wheat version is every bit as delicious as the regular, although she has yet to sell the bread to her children, ages 10 and 11, until it has been transformed with more eggs into French toast.

"They roll their eyes when they think they are getting something healthy," she says.

Challah fans often liken the bread to cake because of its sweet taste and soft, airy texture, and some say that whole wheat defeats the purpose.

Well-made challah is beige in colour, darkened by the sugar, not the eggs, bakers say. Some top bakers suspect yellow-coloured challahs are actually dyed.

"I use a lot of eggs and my challahs are not yellow," says Ms. Goodman-Sone.

Asking top bakers to reveal how they get their challahs to be fluffy is difficult.

Most say it cannot be explained, and those who try speak of a complex science of varying the temperature of the room where the dough rises and the amount of time it is left to stand to correspond with the outside temperature.

"It's not one thing that makes a bread fluffy," says Rafi Kosower, owner of the Harbord Bakery in Toronto, where customers regularly line up outside on Fridays to purchase challahs that are well-known within the Jewish community to rival homemade breads for taste.

"It's a whole approach."

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What's the story behind the bread?

The term 'challah' refers to a piece of dough that is separated from the rest of the loaf in a symbolic sacrifice that is required as part of the process of baking kosher bread.

The ritual forces bakers to recognize that everything ultimately belongs to God, even the fruits of our labour, says Rabbi Adam Scheier of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal.

"Bread is the epitome of man's ability to create something out of the rawest of ingredients," Rabbi Scheier says.

In Biblical times, a portion of the dough was set aside for the Jewish priesthood in a ritual called 'hafrashat challah.'

Today, because there is no Temple, the ritual is done by taking some dough and throwing it into the oven to burn before the rest of the bread is baked in what has come to be known as "taking challah."

The Talmud gives exact requirements on how much dough to take, but one fistful for home bakers and two for commercial bakers has come to be the accepted sacrifice, says Rabbi Scheier.

"It has to be significant enough to make you realize you are actually sacrificing."

A blessing called the Hamotzi is recited over two loaves of challah at the beginning of the Sabbath and holiday meals. When the blessing is recited, the two breads are brought together in unity, representing the idea of duality or coupling, an important theme to consider on the Sabbath.

Heather Sokoloff