When I was a kid I read a (fictional) book that implied that if I mixed the right ingredients in a specific order I could make myself a giant. I spent hours (and what must have been hundreds of dollars worth of ingredients) making truly horrific concoctions and attempting to cajole neighborhood children and my parents into being test subjects. While I insisted that the recipes were highly scientific, the complete lack of measurements, recipes, or note-taking of any kind indicated the opposite.
This is just to say that I fall firmly on the art/cooking side of the cooking/baking-art/science divide. I am comforted to know I come by this honestly; there isn’t a good Ashkenazi Jewish grandmother-recipe in the world that doesn’t include a least one measurement of “a bissel,” which loosely translates to “an unspecified small amount of the item, which if you ask me to measure I will dismissively reply ‘feh’ and continue with what I’m doing.”
Nowhere are the results of the generations of Jewish culinary entropy more evident than in Challah, that most ubiquitous sweet egg bread central to both Friday evening ritual practice and excellent French toast. As I began to attempt to perfect my version of challah, I went to my collection of Jewish cookbooks (I have an addiction that I’m working on). Unsurprisingly, while all thirteen recipes I looked at contained the same 7-8 ingredients, none were identical.
|
Book |
Flour |
Sugar |
Yeast |
Salt |
Honey |
Eggs |
Water |
Oil |
|
Artisan Jewish Deli at Home |
7 Cups |
5 tbsp brown |
6 tsp |
2.25 tsp |
.5 cup |
3 |
1 cup |
6 tbsp. |
|
Cederville Community School Cookbook |
6 cups |
4 tbsp |
4.5 tsp |
2 tsp |
3 tbsp |
4 |
1 cup |
|
|
Jewish Cooking in America |
8 cups |
.5 cup |
6 tsp |
1 tsp |
2 |
2 cups |
.5 cup |
|
|
Joy of Cooking |
6 cups bread flour |
6 tbsp |
4.5 tsp |
2.5 tsp |
4 + 4 yolks |
1 cup |
6 tbsp. |
|
|
Let my People Eat 1 |
8 cups |
2 tbsp. |
2.25 tsp |
1 tbsp. |
2 |
2.25 cups |
.25 cup |
|
|
Let My People Eat 2 |
6 Cups |
.5 cup white |
4.5 tsp |
1.5 tsp |
.25 cup |
.5 cup |
||
|
Modern Jewish Cooking |
5.5 cups |
.33 cup |
3 tsp |
2 tsp |
.25 cup |
4 |
1 cup |
.5 cup |
|
Sababa |
7 Cups |
.5 cup white |
5 tsp |
1 tbsp. |
.33 cup |
3 |
1.75 cups |
.33 cup |
|
The Family Digest |
8 cups |
4 tsp. White |
4.5 tsp |
2 tsp |
4 |
2 cups |
||
|
The Mench Chef |
4.5 cups |
2.25 tsp |
1 tbsp. |
.25 cup |
2 |
1 Cup |
.25 cup |
|
|
Website |
Flour |
Sugar |
Yeast |
Salt |
Honey |
Eggs |
Water |
Oil |
|
Serious Eats |
8 cups |
.25 cup |
4 tsp |
1.5 tbsp |
.33 cup |
6+15 yolks |
.75 cup |
.5 cup |
|
Smitten Kitchen |
8 cups |
.5 cup |
3.75 tsp |
1 tbsp. |
5 |
1.75 cup |
.5 cup |
|
|
Tori Avey |
9 cups |
2 tsp |
4.5 tsp |
4 tsp |
.66 honey |
2+6 yolks |
3 cups |
.25 cup |
It should be noted that these recipes are built to create two Challot. The tradition of baking two challahs is inspired by the Israelites wandering in the desert, who on Fridays received a double portion of manna to eat on Shabbos. In modern practice, the second challah is often a perk of hosting - the first challah is demolished in the early moments of the dinner by your guests, the second is for your more relaxed enjoyment over the rest of the weekend.
So anyway I’ve been working on my challah, with the end goal nothing short of creating the best challah in the world. The recipe below represents the most recent evolution of a creative process that has involved an amount of iteration and note taking my younger self would be aghast at. I made a bunch of them on Friday and sent them home with my crack squad of taste testers (aka my coworkers), attached to a sheet with a rudimentary challah quality grading system. I've begun to evaluate the first bits of feedback and have already started to formulate small improvements. I’m excited to share the process with you.
World’s Best Challah, Iteration 14
Ingredients
3 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (about 1 1/2 packages or 11 grams)
1 tablespoon (13 grams) granulated sugar
1 3/4 cups lukewarm water (98-105F)
1/2 cup vegetable oil, plus more for greasing the bowl
4 large eggs + 3 egg yolks (plus additional for eggwash)
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon (14 grams) table salt
8 to 8 1/2 cups (1000 to 1063 grams) all-purpose flour
Procedure
1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and the first tablespoon of sugar in the lukewarm water; set aside for 5 minutes until the yeast’s foam reaction is visible.
2. Whisk oil into yeast, then beat in the eggs and yolks, with the remaining sugar and salt. Gradually add flour. When dough holds together, you should move to kneading it, either by had or by a stand mixer with a dough hook. Knead until smooth.
3. Clean out bowl and grease it, then return dough to bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. Punch down dough, cover again with plastic wrap and let rise for another half-hour in the same warm place.
4. To braid the challah: (I would direct you to Tori Avey’s Challah Braiding Guide, which this borrows from heavily) Create three equal-size strands. Lay the three strands side-by-side. Grab the center of the right strand and cross it over the middle strand. The right strand is now your middle strand. Grab your left strand and cross it over the middle strand. The left strand becomes your middle strand. Repeat that process until you have braided your challah to the very end. Pinch the three strands together at the end. Grab the challah in the center and flip it towards you so the challah is now upside down and the unbraided strands are facing downward. Continue braiding by grabbing the left strand and crossing it over the middle strand. The left strand becomes your middle strand. Grab the right strand and cross it over the middle strand, drop it in the center. The right strand is now your middle strand. Repeat That process until your challah is fully braided. Pinch the ends of the loose strands together and tuck both the top and bottom tips of the challah under to create a nice rounded shape
5. Brush eggwash on loaves. Allow the dough to rise another hour in their loaves. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
6. Bake in middle of oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the crust is golden and an instant read thermometer reads 190 degrees. Cool loaves on a rack.