Baking Challah

For Thanksgiving merhawk and I decided to bake challah, a traditional Jewish bread. You already saw it as part of our Thanksgiving dinner spread. Here's the "Making of..." story. 😉

First, I've got to say that we both really enjoy challah. When done well it's both light and dense, crusty yet soft, and mildly sweet throughout. Finding good challah in stores has been tough. It seems like either it's got a lot of preservatives, which make it taste like any other store-bought bread, or it doesn't have a lot of preservatives, which leaves it prone to being stale by the time we find it on grocery shelves. Anyway, there's nothing as good as what Mom makes, right?

We used a recipe from Merhawk's mom, my MIL. One thing to understand about MIL's cooking is that she started her adult life by cooking for a literal squad of Army soldiers and never really scaled down. So her bread recipe makes three loaves.

The first picture (right/above) kind of exaggerates the amount of dough in the recipe. That pic's taken after the dough rose. In the mixing bowl it was about 1/4 that volume.

By the way, having that KitchenAid stand mixer makes mixing dough really easy. I'd hate to have to do it totally by hand or with a less capable piece of hardware.

Once the dough rises it's time to "punch it down"— knock some of the air out of it that inflates it to look so big— and then knead it for a few minutes. After that, section the dough out into chunks for each loaf, and section out the dough for each loaf into 3 smaller chunks. Each of these is then rolled out into a strand for braiding.

Watch on YouTube

Braiding the dough is probably the most fun single step of baking challah. The braid is what gives it its classic shape and appearance. The video above shows how easy this step actually is.

BTW, this video is my first upload ever to YouTube. I figured I'd try it out to get the hang of it. Prior to this I uploaded a few videos to LiveJournal's video thingy when I was writing over there. As much as LJ's video tool blows chunks, DW doesn't even have one. So, off to YouTube I go!

Alright, back to stills photography now.



After letting the braided dough rise some more it's time to prep it for baking. We brush on a mixture of egg yolk, honey, and warm water. This gives the challah its soft, brown crust. Then we top it with a sprinkling of sesame seeds for an extra dimension of flavor. Then, into the oven it goes!



<Mumble> minutes later it's done. I say "<mumble>" because as with so many baking recipes, stated time are really just a guide for when you should check whether it's done. We gauged done-ness by the golden brown color on top and by tapping a finger on the crust of the bread to hear a hollow sound.

So, how does it taste? Results in my next entry!

Challah Time!

In my previous entry I wrote about baking fresh challah. When done well it's dense, soft, and lightly sweet. Eating good, fresh challah is a delightful experience. That's why in Jewish tradition it's served as part of celebrations: on the sabbath and on many holy days. How did ours turn out? It's time to taste it and see!



In a word, Meh.

Wait, WHAT??!?!

Understand, I'm often my own worst critic. I have high standards for how I'd like things to turn out. When the result I get is less than the one I want, it's important I a) acknowledge the shortcoming and b) identify how to do better the next time.

I really wanted this challah to turn out deliciously. I wanted it to be as enjoyable as the challah my mother-in-law (MIL) bakes and some of the people at her temple bake for sabbath luncheons I've joined them at. It fell short of that mark. Oh, it was still better that some home-made challah I've had elsewhere and even better than some store-bought challah I've had. It just wasn't great.

Specifically? The texture was off. The bread had a crumbly texture, not a stretchy, sort of taffy-like consistency good, fresh bread has when you pull it apart. From reading I've done about yeast breads, a common reason for this is not kneading the dough enough. Kneading is important to create bindings among the gluten proteins in the flour. These bindings give it that stretchy consistency, both in the raw dough and in the baked bread. (Yup, there's science in cooking!)

There are also a few minor technique bits I flagged mentally as we prepared this recipe. I have very little experience baking bread— okay, this was my first time ever— but in reading a dozen recipes for baking yeast breads I noticed certain commonalities that MIL's recipe diverged from. I wonder if MIL, who's a skilled cook, has a few oddities in her recipes that are adjustments for idiosyncrasies... things like the behavior of particular brand of yeast she buys, compensation for an inaccurate thermometer in her oven, etc.

At the same as I'm hard on myself because I always am, I've got to give both of us credit for making a relatively decent batch of challah. This is Hawk's first batch in about 30 years and my first bread ever. That's right, I've never actually baked a yeast bread from scratch before! I've made cakes many times; I've made quick breads like banana loaf. I've bought pre-made pizza dough and baked it. But never this. I'm sure over the next few tries we'll get better... and then maybe we'll make bread that compares to baking from my MIL and the ladies at her temple, all of whom have decades of experience!