Honey Challah

I came upon Challah bread while looking for different kinds of braided loaves. Brioche like, it is described as soft and rich in taste, slightly sweet with a beautiful shiny brown finish, usually topped with poppy seeds or almonds. What made me attempt the bread was that it looks so beautiful to braid and has a lacquer finish and well, I do like sweet breads.

I have made Challah several times now; I have used various recipes and various flavours, successfully. Sometimes it has been tricky, mostly for the dough to rise as it is so rich with eggs but the taste has always been superb. And the super thing is that the left over bread makes the most amazing French toast ever!

And braiding bread dough is so much fun. There is a certain satisfaction when it comes out of the oven holding its shape

For this honey challah, I have adapted a recipe I found on allrecipes.com.

Ingredients:

295 ml warm water (about 1 ¼ cups)
½ tbsp active dried yeast
120 ml (1/2 cup) honey
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg +3 egg yolks
¾ tsp salt
500 g all purpose flour
1 tbsp poppy seed
about 40 g of raisins soaked in warm water and drained (optional)

For egg wash- keep about a tbsp of the eggs used and add 1 tbsp honey to it.

This recipe makes about 2 small loaves.

1. In a bowl, sprinkle yeast over lukewarm water. Beat in the honey and oil. Add the egg plus the yolks and the salt. Mix all of them together with the water yeast mix.
2. Add flour to the mixture in 3 batches and beat after each addition. Now that sounds so much simpler than it is. I used a wooden spoon, once all the flour has been added and it has become rough dough, spoon it out onto a floured surface and knead the dough till it becomes smooth and elastic. The challah dough is very rich in eggs hence very sticky. Surely if you have a food mixer dough hook that would make life much easier. But if like me, you do not have that, you will have to make do with quite a mess. A good bench scraper could be a life saver here . To be honest I don’t think I would be able to knead it without a bench scraper and the dough really sticks to the surface. So anyhow, knead the dough till it is smooth or about 10 minutes. Oil a bowl and put the dough in the bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and keep the bowl in a warm place and let it rise for an hour and a half or till the dough is double in size. Considering it is very difficult to find a ‘warm’ place in my house given that there is no place warm in Scotland, it takes my dough ages to double. The best method I find is that pre warming my oven at about 110 ˚C for 10 minutes and then switching it off and using the oven to proof my dough works for me. 1 ½ hour is a rough estimate and it totally depends on your personal environment how long the dough takes to double.
3. When the dough has risen, take it out onto a floured surface and punch it down. At this point you can knead in the raisins if using. Knead for 5 minutes adding flour as necessary. You can make a single big loaf out of this. I split the dough in half. With one half, split the dough into 6 equal parts. Roll out to make it into ropes about 12” long. For a 6-braid challah: lay out the dough ropes parallel to each other. Now pinch the top of all of them together.

• Move the outside right rope over 2 ropes.
• Move the 2^nd rope from the left to the far right.
• Take the outside left rope, move it across 2 ropes.
• Take the 2^nd rope from right and move it to far left.
• Start over with the outside right rope again and continue till the whole load is braided and tuck in the last bit.

With the other half I did a 3 braided loaf and made it into a circle.

1. Proof the braided loaves on a greased baking tray. Cover with a towel and proof for another hour.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 190 ˚C (fan).
3. Beat an egg (I usually keep a tbsp from the eggs used in the recipe) with honey and egg wash the loaves generously.
4. Sprinkle poppy seed or almond flakes on the loaves. Bake for about 30-35 minutes till it has developed a lovely shiny brown colour. My loaves were getting too brown from outside so I had covered them with foil after 20 minutes to prevent them from getting burnt.
5. And Ta-dah!!! Cool on wire rack. As with any fresh bread they don’t last very long, 3 days max and then they start becoming too dry (though still taste great!)

I love the smell of this bread. And they are so addictive, even when stale they are lovely to munch on- they look like pieces of cloud! I might be going overboard but honestly it is great bread.  And of course definitely try and make French toasts out of the stale bread.

Babka

Ohhh I wanted the Great British Bake Off to go on for at least another few weeks, it finished too quickly! It was so much fun watching all the wonderful bakes. I have been trying to find some interesting dishes from different countries to try new techniques , textures and combinations. One that I recently saw on Smittenkitchen’s glorious blog is that of Babka- an Eastern European bread. I made it in a cupcake tin for individual portions as on her blog, and they were fantastic!

What you need for this yummy chocolatey goodness is….

For the dough:
120 ml milk
50 g granulated sugar
5 g active dried yeast
1 egg at room temperature
250 g of plain flour
½ tsp salt
45 g unsalted butter
to coat- 1 egg and 2 tsp milk lightly beaten

For the filling:
45 g unsalted butter
50 g granulated sugar
225 g plain chocolate
pinch salt
3/4^th cinnamon powder

1. This recipe makes 12 babkas in a muffin tray. For the dough, warm the milk, it should not be hot and add a pinch of sugar. Sprinkle yeast over the milk, stir and let it sit till the mixture is frothy.
2. Whisk the egg with sugar and then whisk the yeast mixture into it.
3. Mix flour and salt together.
4. Using a hand mixer, add the yeast mix into the flour and mix till combined.
5. Add the butter to the dough and mix till combined.
6. The dough is now really sticky and not the easiest thing to work with, but knead it for 10 minutes till it is stringy. A dough scraper will help kneading it. Grease a bowl with butter and put the dough in it. Cover with a cling film and leave the dough to rise for an hour in a warm place.
7. Meanwhile, for the filling, chop the chocolate into small places then mix everything for the filling and pulse it in a food processor till it looks like granules. If you are not using the food processor, just chop the chocolate very finely into small pieces and mix all the other filling ingredients together.
8. When the dough is double , knead it to deflate and rest for another 5 minutes.  Then roll it out on a floured surface, about 12” by 20”.
9. Spread the filling onto the rolled out dough. Now tightly roll it from the narrow end of the rolled out dough, it makes about a 13” long log. Cut into 1 inch pieces with a sharp knife, put the swirls into the greased muffin tin.
   

   Cut 1″ slices of the babka

10. Cover the tin and leave for ½ hour. 
11. Egg wash the tops of the swirls with whisked egg and milk mix and bake in a preheated oven at  180 ˚C for 15 minutes till the babkas are golden brown.
12. Leave the buns to cool on a wire rack.
13. Store in airtight container.

Baked babkas is cupcake tin

Lovely with a cup of tea!!

I would love to hear about the post or if you try this recipe so do leave your comments.

Banana Bread

Hello hello!

One of the easiest and yummiest snack- this is. Since it has a fruit-banana- it is comparatively healthy, I would even count it as eating my fruit of the day :D. I love banana bread, it is invariably the best use of those bottom of the bowl bananas which have been left too long and squished too much. I usually end up baking it on Saturday mornings and snack on it all weekend then! What fun!!

230 grams plain flour
150 grams granulated white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten lightly
110 grams unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 ripe bananas which comes out to be about 1 and a half cup
1 tsp vanilla extract
100 grams slightly toasted and chopped walnuts

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
Grease and line a loaf tin or a 9″ cake tin.

In a bowl, mash-up the bananas. Add the eggs, cooled butter and the vanilla extract.
In another bowl mix together all the dry ingredients flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and walnuts.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredient bowl and fold it in with a wooden spoon or a spatula. Do not over mix it, just enough so that the mixture is still chunky and streaky.
Scrape the batter into the prepared tin.
Bake for about 45 -50 minutes or till a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack-can be eaten warm or cold.

My house fills up with the amazing smell of the baking banana every I time make this!

Thanks for visiting! Do let me know how you get on with it.