Like many people I know, I have a weakness for carbs and take comfort in how delicious fresh baked bread is. In an attempt to try more bread baking, I tried making challah bread today. I’ve never tried to make it and the only time I can remember even thinking about it was during an episode of SATC when Charlotte is converting to Judaism. Since this is my year to try a bunch of things I never thought I’d do and I have yet to make any other type of bread but soft pretzels, I figured why the hell not. I knew it was going to be challenging, but I followed Smitten Kitchen’s Challah Bread recipe AND Matt McKimmy’s Easy Challah Bread recipe. “But Kate why did you use TWO recipes?!” Well, that’s easy to explain-the first one seemed easy to follow and should’ve been, but it didn’t go over too well so I made one loaf with the first recipe and one loaf using the second.
PROS:
- I used my Kitchen Aid dough hook attachment! I didn’t even know what it was until I researched this recipe! I thought it was for hanging pasta or something.
- I actually braided bread with six ropes, not three which is what I was worried would happen. I can barely braid my hair! Nice!
- I made TWO loaves of bread!!!!!!!!
CONS:
- The first recipe was a mess. I gradually added the 8 cups of flour and tried mixing it by hand. The mix became too dry and started falling to pieces. I added a little water (and by a little I mean way too much) making it too wet so I said f*ck it-I rolled the dough into a ball, cut it in half and set half to raise and threw the other half out.
- The above mentioned incident is probably why the first recipe’s loaf didn’t taste 100% like challah. It’s tasty bread, but not the sweetness you’d want from your challah.
- I planned to put a 1/4 C of raisins in each loaf. I remembered by the time I had rolled out the six ropes ready to be braided, so I jammed a few into the ropes and just hoped for the best.
I can say that this was definitely time consuming, but to be fair I did have to start from scratch for the second loaf which wouldn’t have happened if the first recipe would’ve worked out. I started around 2:50PM and wasn’t done until 6:30PM. I still have to learn a better technique as far as rolling the dough into ropes goes because some of my ropes were too long and I just solved it by cutting off the extra dough. Thoughts anyone? I’m stoked though that I was able to make some tasty bread to share with a friend of mine who was visiting me today during my baking fiasco. Next time I think I’ll use my mixer from the start and I definitely plan on making it in the future for brunch!
(Source: craftingsurprises)
