Challah Bread

No Feature Friday this week, I've been a little out of touch with my fellow bloggers this week, what with the stress of seeing what's going on in my other life, teaching. So far, not much. I'm fine with that, it just means more freedom to do what I want, but still substitute. When I do this I actually take home more money than teaching full time, plus, when the day's done, it's done. No planning, no correcting. What was I stressed over again??? Anyway, I'm slowly coming back to reality and will feature some great recipes next week. 

On to the bread... I love Challah... It's really one of my favs. And whenever I make this bread, people seem to go nuts over it. Here's the book I got the recipe from, it's my favourite book.

 

I borrowed it from one of my fav. people, K over at http://thelittlestcrafter.blogspot.com/, when she, along along with some of my other closest friends, bought my my most loved kitchen tool, my bread machine. I love this book so much that I over used it - it got a little dirty - and had to order her another one, which reminds me, I keep forgetting to give it to her!

Anyway, if you don't know, challah bread is basically a Jewish egg bread, and it's a slightly sweater bread. I really love this recipe, I hope you will too!

Here's my recipe. I'm bold-ing the ingredients because some of them are written within the instructions. Don't you hate that when you don't realize you need something that you didn't know you would be using because you didn't read the instructions carefully?!?!?

Load the following into your bread maker on the dough cycle according to the machine's instructions:

1 egg plus water to fill 7/8 cup

1 Tbsp veg oil

1 1/2 tsp sugar

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp quick rise or bread machine yeast

Then, squish down your bowl. Sorry, I forgot to take pics of this process. But you get the idea. Leave the dough rest for 5-10 minutes, then divide it into three portions and let it rest for a few more minutes. Then, roll the three balls into a sort of snake shape until they are about 14 inches long. Braid them loosely, because the dough will rise quite a bit! Let the dough rise for 45 minutes. Then beat an egg yolk with 2 tsp water and brush it on top of the dough. Sprinkle the loaf with sesame or poppy seeds (here in Quebec, we have a large Jewish community, and I've only ever seen this bread with sesame seeds, but that's just me). Bake this beautiful bread for 35 minutes at 360°F. 

This bread is good for just about anything. But it does make an egg-cellent sandwich! I'm sorry, I just had to go there...

Have a great day!