Challah!

Brianna and I had a lot of fun today making challah (pronounced [khah-luh] like you are trying to clear your throat or something ...). We each did a 4 and 7 plait loaf and also a round one. Brianna took the extras and made a 5 plait loaf. Here are the before and after photos (no 'before' picture for the 5 plait); the recipe I used will be at the end.

Now for the recipe. This makes all that you see in the last picture above, so it's a rather large recipe. I got it FROM HERE and followed it pretty close for the first time. My changes: I used honey instead of sugar and palm shortening instead of oil. Also, I added an extra egg, used 4c whole wheat, and used more flour [which is normal in a bread recipe!] ... and next time I know to use even more flour. I let it rise twice before shaping. Oh yes, and I did not follow the Jewish law of saving back a piece as a burnt offering.

Tips will be included at the end.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons active dry yeast 4 cups warm water 2 tablespoons salt 1/2 cup white sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 4 eggs 12 cups all-purpose flour

1 egg 3 tablespoons water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar, or vanilla extract 1/4 cup sesame seeds

Directions:

1.	In a large bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the water. Let stand for about 5 minutes to dissolve the yeast. Stir in the salt, sugar, oil and 4 eggs until well blended. Gradually mix in the flour. When the dough becomes too stiff to stir, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes. Place dough underneath the bowl to rise until double. Or, you can place the dough in the bowl, and cover with a towel.
2.	Punch down the dough, and divide into 6 or 8 even pieces depending on what shape you want. Remember to take a small piece off and make a blessing (Jewish law). Roll the pieces into ropes. Braid into two loaves, or one really big 6 piece braid - but only if your oven is large enough. Or, you can make the spiral shape challahs out of each rope. Tuck the ends under, and place on a baking sheet to rise until your finger leaves a small dent when you gently poke the bread.
3.	Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Whisk together the remaining egg, water and vanilla sugar. Brush over the tops of the loaves. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the top.
4.	Bake for 35 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bread is deep golden brown. Wrap the small piece of dough that was blessed in aluminum foil, and burn in the oven as an offering while the other loaves are baking.

And now for my own tips ...

It helps to have a bit firmer dough, however if you get it too firm the end result will be heavy bread. Our dough was on the softer side, though JUST firm enough to work with. A firmer dough will also help the finished loaf to be higher instead of flatter. Next time I know to use a bit more flour.

This recipe is said to yield 6 loaves of challah bread or, as said in step number 2, two loaves or even one large loaf. I believe the large one would be much too large ... I'm not sure my oven would even hold the pan required to fit a loaf that large! Baking two loaves seems a lot more realistic, however I decided to break them down even further than that. If you'd like to control the size of your loaves a little better it would help to use loaf pans.

I weighed out my dough to what I thought would be a good size for the chosen plaiting and I am happy with the results. Obviously weighing the dough is not a requirement, however this is just how I like to do things to keep it all decently uniform.

Because this recipe is so large it might not bake as nice or uniformly in the oven (unless maybe you have a nice convection oven). We have access to two ovens and we still found it a challenge to get it all baked to our liking. We rotated the various pans a few times each during baking ... left to right and top to bottom. The gas oven cooked the bread quicker than the electric oven.

The baking stones worked nicer than the metal 'air bake' sheets. This does not surprise me but I thought I'd share anyway.