Recipe Notes: Challah

24 September 2019

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, May 2019; recipe is also available online

Challah is a soft, rich Jewish bread often served at holiday meals. I made it once before and remember how beautiful the braided loaf was. Unfortunately my blog post didn't include many details beyond mentioning the three-braid loaf so I can't compare that loaf with the one made with this new recipe. However, this recipe uses some newer techniques and ingredients and I was eager to try it.

Preparing the dough was pretty standard except for the addition of an egg, two egg yolks, and some vegetable oil. The dough included a paste of flour and water, tangzhong, which is used to good effect in several other bread recipes I regularly make. The flour paste was whisked together with the egg and yolks, oil, and water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Bread flour and yeast were added, mixed until combined, then allowed to rest for 20 minutes. Sugar and salt were added and the dough was kneaded for about 9 minutes. The relatively dry dough was then placed in a large measuring bowl and left to rise until doubled in volume. The risen dough was transferred to a counter and cut into four equal-weight pieces. These were rolled into 18-inch long ropes which were braided to form the loaf. This was covered loosely with plastic wrap and left to rise until doubled; this took 2 hours rather than the 3 hours listed in the recipe. An egg wash was applied and the bread baked until golden brown. Total time from beginning to removing the finished bread from the oven was about 5½ hours.

Like the older recipe, this one produced a beautiful loaf of bread. I used it mostly for sandwiches. I appreciated the more uniform shape of the 4-braid loaf compared to the earlier 3-braid loaf which was more triangular than rectangular. The bread was soft and rich and made good sandwiches. I didn't try it for French toast but hope to do so one day, Challah is said to be the best bread to use for French toast.