I Holler for Challah

Greetings, friends. If you know me, then you know one of my enduring loves in life is bread. I've hardly ever met a carb I didn't like, so I was really exited when East Wichita got our first Great Harvest Bread Company in the mid- '90s. For those who aren't familiar, it's a chain of locally-managed bread stores who make their wares fresh every day and have a menu board of amazing carbo-licious concoctions. We tried a lot of bread there that we wouldn't ordinarily have run into, and one of my favorite new types was Challah, the traditional Jewish egg bread. It's lightly sweet and pairs great with sweet and salty spreads, and makes amazing French toast.

Fast forward 15ish years. There is a Great Harvest in Northern Virginia, but it's a solid 30-45 minute drive to a part of the 'burbs I rarely get to, so I think we've been there once. In my continued trolling through blogs linked to Pinterest and blogs linked to those blogs, I stumbled upon Food Wanderings. This is a lovely blog by an Israeli woman who now lives in the U.S. She did a guest post over at Indonesia Eats for a Honey Challah Bread. I was so excited when I found this that I made it 24 hours later. This is absolutely a Food Wanderings recipe (which is dairy-free for any Kosher eaters), but my value added is to covert the measurements completely to the US system (I had to do a lot of googling to covert the grams since I don't yet have a food sale) and to provide a few more pictures.

For the basic 2-loaf recipe you'll need:

7.5 cups all-purpose flour (preferably unbleached)
5 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar in the raw
1 Tbl salt
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil (+ more for coating dough)
1.5- 2 cups mineral water (I used seltzer instead)

1 more egg for egg wash

Optional ingredients:
handful of golden raisins, raisins, or other dried fruit
sesame seeds

Follow the Honey Challah link above to find her directions. I won't reproduce them, but I'll post my photos below to illustrate each step, since there really aren't any in-process photos over there to guide you.

ingredients!

busting out the dough hook for the first time- this is the flour & yeast mixture

Mixing to incorporate all the wet ingredients

Finished dough- that is some sticky stuff! 

Here I'll say that when I removed the dough from the mixing bowl the first time to oil it, I lightly floured my work surface and was very glad I did. This dough is so sticky, but mostly sticks to itself until you rub the canola on it and the mixing bowl. My dough was pretty thick so I used the whole 2 cups of water and thought about using more, but I didn't. 

Oiled dough, covered and left for 1+ hours, risen dough

 

Dividing the dough- I cut mine in two and then each one in three.

I rolled my pieces out flat with a rolling pin and then curled them into cylinder shapes, then braided them. 

The braided strands

I curled the braid into a circle and tucked then end under, per her instructions. 

I let my dough rise for around 3 hours instead of 1 because I went to the movies, so I think it may have spread out a little more than standard. Next, I put on the egg wash, which is important for that beautiful color and shine on the loaf. I skipped the sesame seeds from the original. 

Finished loaf, smells amazing! 

Enjoying a slice