Baking Challah

[canyonwalker]

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!

Comments

[darkswordesque]

I love challah - but mostly only ever eat it when I get it from a bakery fresh or if homemade (I have a couple of friends who do make it)

[silmaril]

{sad futile grabby gestures}

[merhawk]

Maybe once we get our recipe in sync, we'll make some for one of the socials.