Holiday Challah

I posted some photos of my round braided Challah last night on Facebook and it got some nice reaction so I decided to post my Challah recipe here with a few tips and tricks and some visuals to help you on your way to making beautiful Challot.

First, here is my NEVER FAIL delicious Challah recipe (based on Friday night bread machine challah from “A Treasury of Jewish Baking by Marci Goldman).

1 ¼ C warm water
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/3 C oil
3 T honey
1/3 C sugar
1 lb of bread flour
12 oz white whole wheat flour
2 t salt
1 T instant yeast

Before I get to the instructions, here are a couple of notes. First off, the most important thing I can teach anyone who wants to bake bread is WEIGH YOUR FLOUR!!!!! I cannot stress this enough. WEIGH YOUR FLOUR!!!!! The problem with flour is that it will settle quickly in its container. So if you were to sift your flour one cup will be different if you don’t sift it. However, since the air in the sifted flour weighs almost nothing, the weight of your flour will always be the same no matter if you sift or not. In general if a recipe asks for 2 cups of flour, it means sifted flour. A cup of flour should weigh about 4.5 ounces. So the best way to measure your flour is to get a good scale, put your bowl on the scale and then pour in your flour. I pour in the pound of bread flour and then add the white whole wheat until the scale shows 28 ounces of flour.

Tip number two. Crack two eggs in a bowl. Separate the third and add the yolk to the bowl and save the white. When you get three or four whites you can make yummy meringue cookies!

Tip number three. I use a quarter cup measuring cup that can be read from the top and has tablespoon marks. I fill it will oil to the rim. This is about 1/3 of a cup. Then I pour it in with the eggs. Then I add the honey to just over 3 tablespoons. The extra oil left in the measurer will help the oil pour freely into the bowl with the eggs and oil.

Tip number four. Use a bread machine!!!!!

1. Pour the warm water into the pan of the bread machine.
2. Add the mixture of eggs, oil and honey as above.
3. Add 1/3 Cup of sugar.
4. Weigh your flours in a bowl and add the salt and mix in.
5. Carefully pour the flour mixture to the bread pan.
6. Add the instant yeast to the top of the flour.

Set your machine on the dough cycle and let it go. When it is done, shape the challot and let them rise for up to an hour and then bake for about 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven until the bottoms are browned.

That is all there is to it. If you weigh your flour, you will not go wrong on this recipe. Did I mention that you should weigh your flour?

For a small challah, use about 1 lb of dough. Use up to 2 lbs for a really nice size challah.

To make a simple round, take your dough and roll it out into a long strand. The most important part is that the strand be even in thickness all the way. Then take one end in your hand, and wind the other end around to make you round Challah (it will look like one side of Princess Leia’s hair!!). If you wind it very tight, you will get a very nice tall Challah. If you want the Challah to be more flat, then wind loosely.

To make the round braided Challah as in my photo, the best would be to follow the following youtube video. The woman does three different challot, and the round braid in the middle one.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11B8leqk0RY

To add raisins to your Challah, you should roll out each section into a sheet and then cover with raisins. Then roll up the sheet to make your strand.

Enjoy!