Day 4. Homemade Challah
Couple things I don’t do in life. I never order chicken at a restaurant. That’s something I cook way too much at home. I also try not to make things at home that professionals can do better. Like tomato sauce. I’ve made and canned homemade tomato sauce and will never do it again. Too much work and too much time for something that I can buy for $3 a jar.
Challah falls in line with this. My local grocery chain, Nugget, bakes a lovely challah. I buy one almost every week. But given that I’m now cooped up in the kitchen, my boys and I baked challah today. Just like the tomato sauce it was delicious but a lot of work. So much work, in fact, that I totally forgot to take a picture of the beautiful salmon we ate for dinner!
Classic Challah
Baking homemade challah fills the air with love and your belly with happiness.
Servings 2 large loaves
Ingredients
- 2 packages dry yeast 4 1/2 teaspoons
- 1 ½ cup warm water
- 1 cup cold water
- 1 tbsp fine salt
- ¾ cup oil
- ¾ cup honey
- 1 tbsp sugar Plus another teaspoon for yeast, warm water mixture.
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 7-9 cups flour
Instructions
- Mix yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar into half a cup of warm water and let it sit for ten minutes.
- Meanwhile, mix together salt, oil, honey, and the 1 tablespoon of sugar.
- Then add in one cup hot water and mix well. Then add one cup of cold water and mix well again.
- Whisk in three eggs and then the yeast sugar mixture.
- Slowly blend in two cups of flour and then another two cups of flour. Slowyl add another two cups of flour making sure they blend in well. You can use an electric mixer up until this point. Dough will start to become thick.
- Dump everything out onto a floured counter and start adding half a cup of flour at a time while kneading the dough. The dough should become manageable and, eventually, smooth and elastic. This will take approximately 10 minutes of kneading, which I recommend making your children do.
- Place the dough in a large oiled bowl covered by a damp towel. Let it rise for 2 hours in a warm place.
- After the first rise is done, punch the dough down (another great job for a child) and seperate the dough into two parts. Braid or shape your loaves and then place on a well-greased baking sheet. Let them rise again until doubled.
- Brush loaves with a beaten egg glaze and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350° for 35 to 45 minutes.