I have long suspected that I might just become awesome at baking bread if I'd just try it a little more often. Rosh Hashanah seemed like the perfect time to make my all-time favorite type of bread: challah! (Bagels [if they count] are a very close second, and croissants are third on the list.) Challah is quite the endeavor, but the results are soooooo worth it!
Usually my way of cooking a new recipe is to scan it for things I want to change before actually attempting it. This time, however, I Googled for a recipe that seemed to make the most sense to me, and -- miraculousy -- decided to follow it to the letter. My pick was Maggie Glezer's honey-scented challah recipe, which looked and sounded absolutely decadent with its added smattering of honey to the dough. The entire process, while arduous to me, was still such fun and yielded two little loaves of the most perfect challah one could ever desire. And although it wasn't what I'd call easy, the recipe was straightforward enough that even a bread n00b like me wasn't able to screw it up!
Apparently, Maggie is somewhat notorious for her bread recipes 'round the internet, as I've seen several other bakers reproducing the offerings from her book A Blessing of Bread: Recipes and Rituals, Memories and Mitzvahs as well. Eli at The Fresh Loaf took some fantastic pictures of the fruits of his labor, and Sarah Kagan at Epicurious got some great tips from Maggie on how to ensure the best possible results.
I don't have permission to reprint the recipe here, but she has it over at Epicurious for those who are interested in trying it (and I highly recommend that you give it a whirl!). I can, however, show you some of the pretty pictures that I took while Fuzzband and I worked on our challah.
We made our yeast slurry, then added the rest of our wet ingredients....
...mixed in the other dry ingredients...
...and turned it into a ball!
We covered the ball with some plastic grocery bags (a great way to reuse), and let it sit on the table for a couple of hours. It doubled in size and started to smell awesome!
Then it was time to assemble my loaves. I divided the dough ball into halves, and made 3 long skinny strands out of each half. I braided them together...
... and set them up on my trusty old cookie sheet. Then we covered them with our plastic bags, and left them on the table to proof.
And proof they did! When we'd unwrapped them, they surprised us by being almost 3 times bigger than they were before! Look how succulent and fat and yummy they are! Fuzz brushed the outside with egg while I snapped an "action shot," then into the oven our challahs went!
Here's the stunning finished product, all shiny and gorgeous. It smelled and tasted so amazing that we've decided to definitely make it again -- maybe next year, but perhaps even sooner.
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