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.