Challah Bread
Challah (pronounced as “hallah” with a silent “c”) is an enriched bread with lot of eggs, oil, sugar, salt, water, yeast and flour. It’s a bread of Jewish origin and made during special and religious occasions. Usually, a challah bread is braided. The strands could be three, four, five… twelve and so on. Generally this bread do not contain milk of butter. It’s a very simple and hassle
free bread, and can be made very easily at he..one needs to get a hang of the braiding and then everything else is a cakewalk. Honestly speaking, I struggled big time to understand the braiding technique. But Neha cracked it one just few seconds 🙂 I am sure now you guys would get to see lot of braided breads here. It’s really fun and quite addictive.
If you are ok with using eggs, please go ahead and use eggs in place of potatoes. Please adjust the water content accordingly. But potato is an equally good substitute. It’s an amazingly soft textured bread. Please do try and share your feedback. I shall surely update this post with the full braiding video. I think this would be my last post in 2020. Hopefully 2021 would see me posting more here. Happy New year to all. Stay happy, healthy and contended.
Ingredients:
- All purpose flour 300 gm
- Whole wheat flour 100 gm
- Boiled potato 150 gm
- Salt a pinch
- Oil 1/4 cup
- Instant yeast 1/2-1 tsp
- Sugar 1-2 tbsp
- Lukewarm water ~ 300 ml
- Sesame seeds (optional)
- Milk/egg wash as required
Method:
- Mix the flours, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a big mixing bowl.
- Mash the boiled potato and add it to the dry ingredients.
- Now slowly add the lukewarm water and mix it to form a shaggy dough.
- Transfer the dough onto a clean. kitchen counter or silicon mat.
- Add the oil and start kneading using the standard stretch and fold method.
- Once the dough is soft, bouncy and elastic (which would take around 10-12 minutes), transfer the dough into an oiled bowl.
- Cover the bowl with a damp towel and allow the dough to double in size (which could take around 40 minutes to 90 minutes).
- Once the dough has doubled, take it out of the bowl, place it on the counter, punch out the gases and knead for a minute.
- Divide the dough into four equal parts and shape each into a long rope.
- Allow the ropes to rest and relax for 5 minutes.
- Now braid it as shown in the pictorial representation. You may watch some you tube videos for reference.
- Tuck the edges well and transfer the shaped challah bread on to a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
- Cover the tray with a big dome like lid and allow it to double again for around 20-40 minutes..
- Apply milk wash and sprinkle some white and black sesame seeds on top.
- Now preheat the oven at around 180-200 degree Celsius with both the rods on and fan mode (if applicable) for ten minutes.
- Place the challah into the oven and bake for 30-32 minutes or till thr top gets a beautiful golden colour.
- Remove the bread from the oven and transfer it onto a cooling rack.
- Apply butter on top for that extra gloss and sheen.
- Cool for atleast 30-40 minutes and serve with a soup of your choice or a stew.
- It tastes great the next day too. Perfect fot making french toasts.
Notes:
- Traditionally challah is an enriched bread with lots of egg and egg yolks. You may skip the boiled potatoes and add two whole eggs and one egg yolk to the dry ingredients. Adjust the liquid ingredients accordingly.
- You may also use an egg for the wash before you place in the oven for baking.
- I found my potato challah to be very very soft and it remained soft at room temperature for almost two days.
- It’s fun to make these braided breads. We were recording a video on how to do the four strand braiding, but unfortunately, I forgot the braiding technique mid way and we had to abort the recording 🙂
- I took really some time to learn the technique, but Neha picked it up very fast and became an expert in four strand as well as six strand braiding.
- Below is one such work by her. This is a standard 1:1 wwf:semolina bread dough. She has beautifully done this neat six strand braiding. Doesn’t it look lovely? We shall upload a video soon….
