Challah
By Jeremy Scheck
Like it or not, bread is the quintessential finger food. It may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but when was the last time you ate bread with utensils? We don’t just eat bread with our hands, bread is also the vehicle by which other foods become finger foods, just think of your sandwiches, avocado toast, and hot dogs.
Bread is so closely tied to centuries of sociocultural development — as wheat agriculture shaped much of civilization as we know it — how could a food that predates forks and knives by thousands of years not be a finger food?
Within my own family’s culture, the most widely appreciated bread is challah. Although the word challah is mentioned in the Old Testament, braided loaves that we would recognize today date closer to the 1400s, made by Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Europe. My ancestors likely made some form of this bread as a weekly celebration bread for Shabbat. Modern challah is a braided loaf made from enriched dough, which means it has fat added in addition to the flour, water, yeast, and salt in almost every bread. Challah is characterized by its rich eggyness, which also contributes to it being a celebration bread rather than a daily bread. Its ornate braided structure facilitate the “finger food” function of the bread as the bumps allow for easy grabbing and tearing.
I use a recipe developed my Grandma Karen, which she originally got from my cousin. My grandma prints out every recipe she wants to make and organizes them into large binders. She is very precise when she cooks and bakes, choosing to measure out even ingredients like salt. I love the notes she scribbles in the margins such as “double recipe for Thanksgiving” or “don’t freeze unbaked didn't rise fully”. When reading her notes, I feel like I am baking there with her, witnessing her process of trial and error. Her recipes list the ingredients when they are called for, not all at the beginning — there is a beautiful method to the madness, but she types up these recipes for her own use, her mixer, her oven, her microwave— who cares if it makes sense to anyone else? I especially love seeing the palimpsest-like layers of notes; you can sometimes observe over five different types of pen and pencil markings with different measurements crossed out and adjusted. There are many stages of development before she will confidently stamp a recipe as “Karen’s Best”...it’s clear my own passion for recipe testing is in my genes. The challah recipe that I’ve now made at least a hundred times in fact “Karen’s Best”. This version is written in her typical fashion, but it’s also backed up digitally in our files. The difference is subtle but I think the evolution is really interesting to observe. And she doesn’t say “Basic Chollah (BEST)” lightly, it is truly the best challah I have ever tried; crisp crust with a sweet and tender crumb and most importantly, never dry. I hope you enjoy making it as much as I do.
Ingredients for …
final prep
1 egg beaten well with 2 teaspoons of cold water
Poppy or sesame seeds (optional for sprinkling)
dough
1–1/4 cups (288ml) water
¼ cup (50g) sugar
3–1/4 tsp dry yeast
1/3 cup (65g) canola oil or olive oil
1/3 cup (100g) honey
3 large or extra eggs
1–1/2 tsp kosher salt
5–6 cups (650–780g) King Arthur Bread Flour
Making the dough:
Heat the water to 110°. The easiest way to approximate it is to place room-temperature water in the microwave 50 seconds. In a measuring cup, mix half a cup or so of the warm water with the yeast and sugar and set aside for 5 minutes, until it bubbles a lot.
In the large measuring cup with the rest of the warm water, whisk the oil and honey and with the water.** Add the eggs and beat well.
In a large bowl (or bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook), mix 5 cups flour and salt. Add all the wet ingredients and mix. Knead 10 minutes, either by hand in a lightly floured surface or in the mixer. Resist the urge to add a lot more flour in the kneading process as that will make it more dense; a bench scraper allows me to handle the dough enough without having to add too much.
Oil the mixing bowl and return the kneaded dough to it, covered with greased aluminum foil. l. At this point you can place the bowl in the fridge to use the next day or let rise for 1-2 hours in a warm place.***
First rising:
Take the dough out, place on a lightly floured surface. Clean the mixer bowl, then spray with canola oil. Return the dough to the bowl, and cover with greased aluminum foil. At this point you can place the bowl in the fridge to use the next day or let rise for 1-2 hours in a warm place.**
Shaping:
My grandma and I like to shape our challah with a large 3 strand braid on the bottom, and a smaller 3 strand braid stacked on top. We weave the two ends together. This shape gives more height to the loaf and definition to the plaits. You can just do a three stranded braid but it will be more flat.
Second rising, final preparation, and baking:
Place both braided loaves on separate baking sheets lined with silpats or parchment.
Preheat the oven to 400° F.
Let the loaves rise on the counter top, uncovered, for between 1–2 hours.***
Brush the egg wash (from the final prep ingredients) onto one loaf. Sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds to taste.
Put the first loaf in the oven, and change the setting to 375° F Convection. Bake for 25 minutes, until a thermometer inserted into the loaf exceeds 185° F.
Repeat with the second loaf.
Cool on a wire rack before cutting into.
* Measuring the canola oil first lets the honey out of the measuring cup more easily.
**My grandma and I like to make a nice environment for the dough by boiling water in the microwave then placing the bowl of dough in the microwave (without taking the cup of water out) and letting the dough rise in the turned off microwave.
***Rushing the second rising results in unattractive spreading between the braid peaks.
