Rustic Sourdough Challah

I feel a little like sourdough is a baking enigma.  Or at least some sort of dreamy mystery for most amateur bakers.  I loooove sourdough, but was completely fearful of it.  The idea that you have this yeastless base in your fridge at all times, just waiting to be feed like sort of living being.  A little scary, right?  No?  Maybe it's just me.

But, I really wanted to make Sourdough Challah happen.  The idea that villagers could just pass on the sourdough starter from friend to friend.  It all seems very shtetl life to me, a romantically beautiful notion.  When I made my most recent bread flour order from King Arthur Flour, I decided to bite the bullet and try out sourdough.  So I ordered their Classic Fresh Sourdough Starter.  (A few weeks ago, I tried making my own sourdough starter using the method from A Blessing of Bread, one of my favorite go-to challah recipe books when looking for inspiration or to have a question answered.  Needless to say, I forgot about my starter and killed it before it was ever ready... so the KAF established starter seemed like a safer bet.)

When the starter arrived, KAF gave some pretty specific instructions on feeding the starter to reactivate it.  Then, last night I set to work on making it a 100% hydration starter for my challah this morning.  To do this, I halved my refrigerated starter and added the recommended water and flour to what was left.  Then I let it sit overnight.  12 hours later it looked like this...

Ready, bubbly and time for Sourdough Challah!

I relied heavily on Sour Salty Bitter Sweet's Sourdough Challah, though this recipe is quite similar in proportions to my Basic Small Batch Challah.

1 c hydrated sourdough starter
1/2 to 3/4 c tepid water (I was closer to 3/4)
scant 3 tbsp honey
1/4 c neutral oil like canola or vegetable
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks plus 1 more for egg wash
1 1/4 tsp salt
3 1/2 c bread flour

What you really need for this challah is TIME.  The sourdough starter needs about 12 hours to hydrate, and the dough rises really slowly.  If you're making this  for Shabbat, you'll need to start pretty early in the morning.  Yield is 2 medium sized loaves or 1 large loaf.

Mix together the wet ingredients: the starter, water, honey, oil, and 1 egg + the yolks.  (This challah is much more fool proof... it's basically a dump challah.)  Mix everything together with a wooden spoon or large whisk.

Add the flourand salt, starting with just one cup of flour.  The dough is going to be more stiff than normal, so I recommend mixing it by hand initially, and then using the dough hook for the majority of the kneading (you can of course knead by hand).  The dough will feel slightly stiffer than normal challah dough.

Here's where the TIME comes in.  You need it.  Loads of it.  Some recipes say let the dough triple.  Some double.  Some simply say 8 hours.  4 hours.  12 hours.  I don't have a really good recommendation for you.  I let mine rise for 6 hours, until it just started to touch the top of the plastic wrap in the oiled bowl.  (Usually, my rises look like this.)

At this point, take a moment and smell your dough. It should smell awesome. I just love that sourdough aroma. Yum. Braid as normal. And now for more TIME. Let rest at least two hours, preferably more.  I had a casserole baking in my oven at 450, so I put the pan on top of the oven, which rushed the braided rise a bit.  Eggwash and add poppy or sesame seeds as desired.  Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway.

When I'm trying a new recipe, I always like to make a few rolls so I can sample before Shabbat!  Wow.  These smell like deli sourdough; I'm so pleased.  The five-stranded braid isn't as pretty as I'd like, but the challah's didn't rip in the oven, so I think they're proofed enough.  On the whole, the loaf isn't as sweet as my challahs usually are.  However, this would make a delightful sandwich bread or dipping in soup... just what I was going for.

Have YOU ever experimented with sourdough?  Did I make any egregious errors? Shabbat Shalom from our bayit to yours!

Stuffed Pizza Challah

While we were making our Savory Braided Challah for Shavuot, I left some dough aside because we can't make Pizza Challah without enjoying a real treat... Stuffed Pizza Challah.

Roll out your dough from Pizza Challah into a long, thin rectangle.

Place fresh mozzarella slices on the strands. You can also use shredded, but we enjoy sliced for pizzas at home, so that's usually what's in the house.

Roll the dough, keeping out air bubbles.

I even added a bit of cornmeal to the bottom of the baking pan.

Make sure to tuck in the ends and try to make sure you really seal the roll, otherwise you'll end up with this... {which is necessarily a bad thing, actually}

Don't forget to egg wash and sprinkle with garlic powder and parmesan! Bake as normal. You may need to foil this bad boy as the inside can be a bit doughy while the outside gets a bit dark.

We're looking forward to diving into this challah during Yom Tov with a lasagna dinner.

Hag Shavuot Same'ah from our bayit to yours!

Savory Braided Challah for Shavuot

I'm on a kick, haverim.  I'm loving this dairy-filled, cheesy, oozing challah adventure of pre-Shavuot cooking. And, yes, that sentence was ridiculous.  But so is this challah.

Basically,  took two of our favorite challot and braided them... together.  Parmesan Roasted Garlic Challah + Pizza Challah = Major Shavuot Love. So, I set to work.

For the Parmesan Roasted Garlic Challah, I needed some roasted garlic. To roast the garlic, I put an entire bulb into my teeny-tiny LeCreuset, spritzed with a little olive oil spray, and baked at 425 for about 50 minutes (until I could pierce it with a sharp knife).

In the meantime, I headed out to my garden for a bit of fresh basil for Pizza Challah. Can I just say... I'm over the MOON that it's gardening season.

For the loaves, I chose even-numbered braids {You can find my challah braiding methods here}.

The braids ultimately looked much more impressive when they were pre-bake than after the bake. The pre-bake really shows the orange color of Pizza Challah.

You could still see the color change on the ends of each challah.

And definitely inside!

I'm really happy with these challot. They're a marriage of two really delicious challah recipes. And, they're a bit ridiculous, which reminds me a lot of another marriage that is coming up on almost two years.

Hag Shavuot Same'ah from our bayit to yours!

Shavuot Recipe Book: Dairy Challah

There are many stories that explain the tradition of eating dairy foods on Shavuot, but none are truly conclusive.  Some simply connect it to the idea from Exodus that the Israelites would leave Egypt and go to the land "flowing with milk and honey."  Here's another interesting tidbit if you like gematria...

A sage discovered that the initials of the four Hebrew words in Numbers 28:26, which describe the sacrificial meal offering on Shavuot, spell mei halav (from milk), suggesting that dairy food is the acceptable dinner for the festival. At Sinai, the Israelites were considered to be as innocent as newborns, whose food is milk. {Source}

Cool, right?  There's more on that link that talks about halav (milk) having the same gematria value as the number of days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai... a stretch?  Perhaps, but I do love puzzles!

(Yup!  That's a puzzle.  We're become a little... obsessed with puzzles.)

I've made challah with milk before... Sprouted Wheat with Milk and Honey Challah included milk because I read (somewhere) that milk helps relax the wheat.  I wasn't honestly convinced that it made much of a difference, but it was a fun experiment anyway!

This recipe will yield one large or two medium-size loaves.

2 1/4 instant yeast (1 packet)
3 c bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 c milk, slightly warmed (I used skim)
1 heaping tbsp basswood or other dark honey
2 eggs plus 1 more for egg wash

This challah was the first one that I actually used instant yeast like one is supposed to use instant yeast... I just mixed it in with the flour. Normally, I've been afraid of that and proof it just like active dry yeast, although you don't have to do that.

Mix together the yeast, flour, and salt.  Can you spot the yeast here?

Yeah, me neither.

On the stove in a small pan, warm the milk and honey, stirring constantly. Add the milk/honey mixture and the eggs to the flour/yeast mixture.

Blend with a wooden spoon and then knead by hand or on the stand mixture until a ball forms.

While you're mixing, you can use this time to catch up on your favorite shows... Downton Abbey, anyone?

Let rest in an oiled bowl for about an hour and a half or until doubled in bulk.  Braid as normal and allow to rest an additional 20-30 minutes.  Egg wash and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Now, here's the part where I get honest.  I have no beautiful pictures of this challah to share.  I got a little... cavalier... with my challah shape.  I read a lovely little story in Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread on Ladder Challah.  Glezer writes:

The ladder-shaped challah, which is served on Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai, symbolizes spiritual ascension and Mount Sinai because the Hebrew words for "ladder" and "Sinai" have identical numerical value (as shown in the mystical study of Torah called gematria).  {A Blessing of Bread, 79.}

So, I set to work.  I started with a flattened disk and added the rungs.

It looked pretty great! I was very proud.

And oh dear. What a disastrous result.

With the popularity of Pinterest, there have also appeared a lot of Pinterest Fail Blogs that will show a picture of the goal and the picture of one's own result with the phrase, "Nailed it." I think I nailed it.  Oy.

Luckily, I also made some rolls that DID turn out quite lovely.  This challah has a sweetness to it that's a bit unexpected.  It also has a darker color, which I suspect is from the basswood honey.  It's a bit tough to work with... I think it's the lack of oil.  But, overall, I wouldn't change a thing.  It was a really nice dairy challah!

We'll be tweaking our Shavuot recipes over the next few weeks!  Have a recipe to share?  A request for something special?  Send to it me at themrs {at} thechallahblog {dot} com or leave a comment here!

Bagels!

We got a new oven right before Pesah!  It was really, really, really, really, really exciting.  (Did I mention I was excited about my oven?)  Our old oven was AWFUL.  It turned off regularly whenever programmed between 350 to 375 degrees... not helpful for a challah baker, right?  The temperatures were consistently uneven and the oven just didn't hold it's heat.

But our NEW oven came right before Pesah which meant... nooooo kashering!  What a relief that amongst preparing for a seder for 18 and deciding where to do my Ph.D. (!) I did not have to also kasher an oven.  Our new baby is pretty standard, nothing terribly fancy and really modest price-wise.  But it does have a continuous grate and FIVE (count 'em!) burners which is really handy.

 

So can I tell you how excited I was post Passover for our first bread baking!  Bagels!!!!

I can't take credit of this recipe.  It came straight off the back of a bag of King Arthur Sir Lancelot High Gluten Flour.  Here's a link to the recipe, and here are my adventures in making it! 

 

The dough is very tough. It almost feels too tough. But I just told myself to trust the recipe. Since I wasn't experimenting, it was my only option. This was one of the first times we actually used instant yeast as written... just mixed it in right at the beginning. I've been proofing my instant yeast for challah (basically just treating it like active dry). Anyone have any thoughts? 

The dough went around on the dough hook pretty well, and held together easily. I did take it off the dough hook perhaps a bit early. I had to knead a bit by hand, but the texture came out pretty smooth.  

There are several methods out there for making bagels. Most include rolling out long strands and pinching them together. I've done this before, but my bagels almost ALWAYS come apart in the boiling process. I like King Arthur's method better... roll out "rolls" and let rest for a half hour. 

When the half hour is nearly up, I put the water with sugar and malt powder on to boil (love my power boil on the new stove!). Then I poked holes into each of the bagels (carefully!) and let rest another ten minutes. 

The boiling process is fun, but a bit scary. I also found it very interesting to see the variety of all the different boiling times. Some recipes say 30 seconds per side. Others 2 minutes each side. This recipe said 2 minutes on side one and 1 minute on side two. That's what I did. 

 

We topped with cinnamon sugar (yum!), sesame seeds, and onion flakes. The onion flakes got a bit burnt, so I'm not sure if powder might have been a better option. We would definitely do poppy seeds in the future, but we were out this time. Also, sea salt or parmesan cheese are great options! 

 

It was hard to keep The Hazz from eating the entire plate. 

 

What did YOU do to celebrate the return of Hametz to your Post-Passover selves?