Challah baking

I love to cook and bake.  I've always been a baking failure though. My breads come out like rocks. Or dried out. Last week I played around with some French bread, artisan style.  It came out pretty but not so much in the taste department.  I've successfully made challah for Shabbat, but it was many years ago.  I decided to start again but was afraid of massive failure.  I took from a few recipes I found at imamother.com and put them together for this:

NOTE: Do not change  the order of mixing this recipe or it may not be fail safe anymore!
Mix together:

1.5 Tbsp. dry active yeast (that's 2 packets)
1/2 cup warm water
A pinch of sugar


*After mixing yeast with the warm water and the pinch of sugar, wait for yeast to foam and bubble.  This tells you that your yeast is indeed active. Make sure water is just slightly above lukewarm.  Too cold water will cause yeast not to activate. Too hot water will kill the yeast.

Add and mix together with dissolved yeast:

1-1/2 cup warm water (this makes 2 cups total of warm water, including the 1/2 water used in the yeast)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
3.5 cups flour

Add to mixture and mix together:

2 eggs beaten
1/2 cup oil

Add to mixture and mix together:

3-1/2 to 4 cups flour
Remove from bowl and knead into a good dough. Lightly sprinkle with flour while kneading. Continue kneading until no longer sticky but not dry. About 10 mins.

Place in a lightly oiled bowl.  Turn the dough to get the dough oiled as well. Cover with clean towel (a tea towel or something not terry cloth.  Or just use plastic wrap) and let rise for 1 to 2 hour.  Punch dough down at least three times during the rise. Letting it rise for 2 hours makes for a fluffier challah.

After rising, take the piece of dough that you will be separating and either burn it on your gas stove flame or wrap it in foil and burn it up in your oven. This recipe is not large enough to make the bracha, so you just separate. If you double the recipe and a bit more flour you have enough to make the bracha.

Shape dough into braided loaves (I use 6 strands).

Let the braided loaves rise on parchment lined cookie sheets for about an hour to 1.5 hours.

Brush with egg wash

If you like add toppings:
1) a mixture of salt and garlic powder
2) a mixture of sugar and cinnamon
3) or add either poppy seeds or sesame seeds

 After final rise, place challah in cold oven.  Turn on heat to 350 degrees and bake for 30-45 minutes or until gold brown.  A cold oven allows the challah to continue rising as it warms up to baking temp.
This recipe can be doubled.

And....

Here is right before it went into the oven:

And this is when it came out:

It was fluffy, light, not dried out, and just incredible!

Success!


Impressed with myself, I am going to try a standard white sandwich loaf tomorrow.  Hopefully I will become the bread making success I long to be.