Birthday Treat (Anyone still there?)

I promise I'm still around, haverim.  Things have just been a little challenging lately.  We're dealing with some major transitions at Beit Stein, including the start of my doctoral program among others.  We promise, we're still around and still making challah.

But we've just been so uncreative lately.  With the craziness of the holidays and starting a PhD program, plain, basic, delicious regular old challah is all that's been acceptable in our house.  Any ideas for some new recipes?  Request for clarifications on old favorites?  It's TOUGH to make a new recipe every week... failing a few times has taught me NOT to just make new recipes for the heck of it, but make them because I truly want to get creative with challah.

So, bear with us.  Stay tuned.  Don't take us out of your Google Reader yet.  We're still here.  Today is The Hazz's birthday.  Besides a cake and mac n'cheese (which I think he agreed to partially because I like it), he gets sprinkle challah.  Because he's just that awesome.


Shabbat Shalom from our bayit to yours!

Sprinkle Challah for Purim

I can't take credit for thinking this up.  I saw it on Leigh Ann's old blog (she now blogs here - make sure to check her out!) and tried it out last year.  It was a complete failure!  I ended up with a pink, slightly sickly sweet challah.  I pretended it tasted good.  But it really didn't.

So, in honor of Purim, we're bringing back sprinkle/multi-color/funfetti challah.  This year, we're using jimmies (did you know that we don't actually know why sprinkles are called jimmies?).

I started out with my normal old challah recipe. I floured the dough lightly to prevent the colors from running too much. Then, I just dumped on the sprinkles.


Then I just braided as normal.


Before baking, I decided there weren't nearly enough sprinkles, so I added a few more after egg-wash and baked as normal.


While we on vacation last week, the Hazz and I stopped at a paint-your-own-pottery place. I made a Shalom door plate, and the Hazz made a word bubble plate with, "V'ahavta larekha kamokha. (Love your neighbor as yourself.)" While it will probably one day end up on the wall, it made a great display plate!


Here it is in all it's glory!  Yum!


What are YOU doing to celebrate Purim (and extend perhaps extend the holiday like we are)?

A Frelichen Purim! 

PSST: You might want to check out Hamantaschen Challah and M&M Challah, our other Purim-inspired creations!

Frosty the Snowman

It finally snowed!  We've had 50s all December and up until January.  Not normal.  We should have had at least 10 inches by now and we've had only the past 4-6 that we received overnight!  Woo hoo!

But... the Hazz and I had to get excited for the non-existent snow.  In December, we made our own little challah Frosty.  We started with three little balls of challah, flattened with our palms.  We then cut the hat out of a rolled piece (a square plus a tiny long line).  Coal eyes were chocolate chips and a piece of dried apricot for the carrot nose.

Then we added an egg wash. Using a method that I learned from This Good Life on Polka Dot Challah a while ago. Dip your thumb in any left over egg wash and then dip in the sprinkles or topping. Dab on in specific place you'd like. We used cookie sprinkles for the scarf and poppyseeds for the hat. Then The Hazz sprinkled silver sprinkles over the whole shebang. You know, for snow.

What we sort of forgot was that challah browns in the oven. So, he's Frosty with a tan.  He was delicious!  Tasted like a doughnut!!

PB&J Challah - DON'T DO IT!

So, I'm going to preface this whole post with three words.  DON'T DO IT!  No, well, that's not very nice.  Give it a shot.  Try it out.  Really, maybe you won't be as uber-disappointed as I was in the end result.  Because PB&J Challah was such an "eh..." I've put off the post.  I wasn't excited about the post because I was so unexcited about the end result of the bread.

In theory, it should be great, right?  We've done stuffed challah for Nutella, and the whole peanut butter-in-the-dough challah is tasty but really dry.  So, I combined the two ideas.  Three-stranded braid.  One peanut butter filled, one jelly filled, one just bread.

First of all, jelly = epic fail.  Maaaaaybe jam would work?  Maybe just fruit filled?  I don't know, but I ended up yelling to The Hazz in the living, "Help!" and having a goopy messy of fruity blob (descriptive, no?).   The peanut butter went in well.  But the baking result was so aaaaaaverage.  The peanut butter sort of turned into hard crusty... peanut butter crust?  The jelly disappeared almost entirely (I have no idea where it went) and the overall dough flavor was just off as a result.

It looks pretty but it was soooo blah!

I'm pretty sure PB&J Challah can be done.  I've seen mention of it on other websites, but never a method.  So, just DON'T DO IT!  (If you by some stroke of magic figure it out, by all means email me and you'll get a guest post FOR SURE!)

Shavua Tov, Chaverim!

Experiment - M&M Challah

That's right... your eyes don't deceive you.  We've ventured into candy challah.  A friend of ours has been encouraging (requesting/demanding) us to make a Reese's Peanut Butter Challah.  Yes, I think we'll try it at some point.  But this past Friday, we had some M&Ms in the house.

Method
Basically the same as chocolate chips.  Knead 'em in right before braiding.  Remember back in March when I tried to make Tie Dye Challah for Purim?  And how I failed immediately with a pink loaf of bread?  Ridiculous.

Well, I think M&Ms might be the answer.  They do bleed a bit.  But not as much as the sprinkles.  And seriously... the sweetness, the fact that it's CANDY CHALLAH.  Wow.

I experimented with a teeny-tiny loaf and a few fun size bags of M&Ms.  (As I do with oatmeal cookies, I pulled out the brown M&Ms... unlike Matthew McConaughey in The Wedding Planner, who ONLY eats the brown ones, I feel that why would I bother putting pretty colors in if a percentage of them are just brown).

I want to do a full size.

This might be the craziest challah I've ever done.  Have YOU ever tried a ridiculous, candy, filled challah?

View of Shabbat - June 17th - Polka Dots

It's a quiet Shabbat at home here with just The Hazz and The Mrs. We're having tomato soup and mac n' cheese with broccoli. Talk about comfort food. Nom nom.

This Shabbat, we did a small batch with 1/3 bread flour, 2/3 all purpose flour. It turned out great (well, it looks great). I'd like to introduce to you, POLKA DOT CHALLAH!

This cute method I learned from This Good Life. I eggwashed the whole shebang then used my finger dipped in egg then poppyseeds to create the effect. I'm pretty sure the possibilities are endless. I want to do like my whole hand, it's so fun.


Shabbat Shalom!

The Tie Dye Challah Adventure

The Tie Dye Challah in all it's glory.

Tie-dye challah, a Purim-related delicacy (or it should be), was inspired by Leigh Ann at The Frugal Ima's Funfetti Challah.  I am proud to say that I (initially FAILED).

Remember, when you were at summer camp, and you were learning how to tie dye shirts... If you mix all the colors together too much, then you get a sort of brown.  Well, Leigh Ann suggests Jimmies, but I didn't have them.  I'll just be resourceful, I told myself. So, I thought it would be brilliant if I mixed the rainbow non-pareils in with the flour.  You know, nice all over color look.  Well, all the color CAME OFF the non-pareils.  Fortunately, when I made this challah the reds and pinks sort of dominated, so at least we got PINK, quite princess-y dough.

In order to rectify the situation, I quickly whipped up a second batch of plain dough and kneaded in the non-pareils just before braiding.  This all would have been easier if I had had "Jimmies" in the house, like she suggests.  But I didn't. So, here is the result of both methods! I used my small batch recipe.

The Pink Dough	The Tie Dye Dough
Luckily, it tastes delicious! Now, to the store for Jimmies!
A Frelichen Purim!