Uri Scheft’s Challah

May 31, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 12 Comments

I’m a sucker for beautiful bread, and Israeli-Danish baker Uri Scheft makes some of the most beautiful bread I have ever seen. I found a Google Books preview of his recent book, Breaking Breads, and his challah – OH THE CHALLAH – is so lovely I could weep. It reminds me of some rare and mysterious sea creature. Seriously, go look at it right now. Page 41. I’ll wait.

[…whistles, twiddles thumbs…]

Anyway, when Israel was announced as the Around the World in 12 Plates destination for May, I knew immediately that I would be making Uri’s challah. So I did! I’ve made challah before and gotten fancy with the braiding, but this time I got extra fancy with both the braiding AND the garnishing, because challah is a special occasion bread, after all.

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Decorated Challah

January 30, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 18 Comments

decorated challah I always forget about Bread Baking Day, but this month it is being hosted by Jenni of the Gingered Whisk, so I made the effort to participate. The theme Jenni chose this month is bread with a decorated crust. I’ve been inspired by the gorgeous loaves of bread on this blog for a long time so this was the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

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Daring Bakers: Challah Back Y’all!

May 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 77 Comments

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

After this challenge, I can’t say “challah” without thinking “holla!”. I had so much fun with this one!

I made three different kinds of challah: plain honey white challah, whole wheat challah filled with apples, cinnamon, and maple syrup, and sourdough challah. Even more fun than all the different varieties were the different braiding techniques that Ruth, our host, encouraged us to try. I went for a six-strand braid, a five-strand braid, and a four-strand braided round. If you’ve never shaped bread like this before, challah is a great way to start: the dough was really easy to work with and good for braiding….

6-Strand Braided Challah Loaf

March 16, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 18 Comments

This is, sadly, the final installment of my challah dough series. I wasn’t going to do a plain challah loaf – I was going to continue in the vein of sticky buns with unique fillings – but then I found a video demonstrating a six-strand challah braid that I got all excited about and had to try. The dough was easy to work with, and I was really pleased at how the braid turned out.

When it came to eating it, I was reminded that along with being a great base for sticky buns and such, this dough makes a really really good loaf of bread – soft yet firm with a nice fine crumb and great favour. It also makes amazing toast, and if it had lasted long enough, probably would have made wonderful french toast too.

While this loaf may look or sound complicated, it’s really not – a six-strand braid is simply two steps repeated over and over again. For the sake of this tutorial, I made it into four steps, because first you do the two steps on the right, then repeat them on the left. But however you look at it, if you can do a regular three-strand braid, this should be no problem. And no matter how your braid turns out, you’ll have a loaf of delicious challah bread in the end, which is the important part!

6-Strand Braided Challah Loaf

To make this braid, you will need one 1 1/2 lb portion of chilled challah dough.

Place the chilled dough on a lightly floured surface and divide it into 6 equal pieces.

With your palms, shape and roll each piece into a tapered log about 10 inches long. Try to use a minimal amount of flour when doing this – just enough to stop it from sticking.

Line your 6 tapered logs up vertically side by side and pinch them together at the end facing away from you. Keep hold of this pinched end with one hand.

Now start braiding:

Step 1: Take the strand that is second from the right and move it all the way over to the far left, like so:

Step 2: Take the strand that is on the far right and move it to the middle, like so:

Step 3: This is the mirror image of Step 1, done on the left side. Take the strand that is second from the left and move it to the far right:

Step 4: Again, this is a mirror image of Step 2 but on the left. Take the strand that is on the far left and move it to the middle:

Now you are back at Step 1. Repeat Steps 1 through 4 several times. You will start to see a pattern emerging:

Don’t pull on the strands or stretch them too much when you are braiding – you want to keep the braid loose so that the dough has room to expand when it bakes. If the braid is too tight, it will “explode” in the oven.

When you get to the end, pinch the ends together. You should have a tapered, slightly foot ball-shaped loaf.

You can gently “bump” the tapered ends with your palms to shorten up the loaf and give it a higher cross section.

The bottom of the braid will look like this. Cool, hey?

Place the braid on a piece of parchment paper, cover it lightly with plastic, and let it rest for about an hour and a half.

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Brush the challah with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water) and, if desired, sprinkle it with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

Bake for 25-35 minutes, until shiny and dark golden brown.

Cool completely before slicing.

Challah Dough

February 23, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

I’ve been making bread using stored dough à la Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for a few months now, and I figured it was time to branch out from the basic, rustic boule dough and into something fancier. This is the “master” challah dough, which can be made into not only the traditional braided loaf, but also used as the base for things like sticky buns, coffee cakes, doughnuts, and anything else that you might want to use an enriched dough for. “Enriched” meaning that in addition to flour, water, yeast, and salt, this dough includes eggs, butter, and honey to make it even more delicious and decadent.

This is the dough that convinced me to buy the ABin5 book – I used it to make caramel pecan sticky buns (which I will be sharing in a few days!), and it was so delicious that I had to have the book.

As I mentioned in my previous ABin5 post (which I recommend reading if you are going to make this dough!), Canadian all purpose flour has a higher protein content than the flour that was used to develop the book’s recipes, so I have adjusted the amount of water accordingly (the original amount of water is 1 3/4 cups). Because this dough contains eggs it has a refrigerated storage life of 5 days, after which it can be frozen in appropriately-sized portions for up to 4 weeks (defrost overnight in the fridge before using). When I made this dough, I had three recipes in mind to use it with, so I divided it up into thirds of slightly less than 1 1/2 lbs each.

Challah Dough

Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Check out their website for wonderful recipes, tips, and bread-baking support. Makes just over 4 lbs of dough.

In a large, 4 – 6 quart bowl or container with a lid, whisk together:

4 large eggs

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 1/2 tbsp instant yeast (any kind of granulated yeast will work)

1 tbsp coarse salt

Whisk in:

2 cups + 1 1/2 tbsp warm water

Add:

7 cups all purpose flour, measured with the “scoop and sweep” method:

With a sturdy wooden spoon, mix in the flour until the dough is evenly moistened. You may need to get in there with your hands to incorporate the last of the flour (resist the urge to knead the dough). It should be quite sticky.

Cover the dough with a non-airtight lid – you want to prevent it from drying out but still allow it to breathe (my lidded container was in the fridge with other dough in it, so I used loose plastic wrap).

Let it rise in a warm place for about 2 hours, during which time it should grow in size quite a bit and develop all kinds of beautiful bubbles.

Place it in the fridge for several hours or overnight, until the top flattens out and sinks a bit. The dough needs to be chilled before handling.

When you are ready to bake, dust the surface of the dough lightly with flour. Grab the floured dough and pull out the desired amount (use scissors to cut off the chunk of dough).

Dust the dough portion lightly with flour and shape it into a ball by gently pulling the top of the dough and tucking it underneath, handling it as little as possible while doing so (this should take about 5 seconds). I divided the dough into thirds (just under 1 1/2 lbs each) – one to bake with immediately and the other two to freeze for later.