A friend of mine requested that I make challah bread (a traditional, eggy kind of Jewish bread) so that he could experiment with making stuffed french toast. I was promised stuffed french toast as payment for the bread, it seemed like a good deal to me. I looked up several recipes for challah bread, like any kind of bread it seems nobody can agree on exactly how to make it. So I complied a couple different ones and came up with this list of ingredients:
Ingredients for challah bread:
4 cups white flour
1/4 cup brown sugar (very approximate, recipes ranged from 1 tbsp to 1/2 cup, I erred on the generous side)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 egg yolks (save the whites for egg wash)
1 cup warm water
1.5 tbsp of yeast
3-4 tbsp of olive oil (also just guessing that this is about as much as I used, you want a lot basically. One recipe even called for a 1/2 cup, much as I love olive oil that seemed a bit excessive)
Because of all the eggs it was very interesting to work with the dough, it was almost more pastry like rather than bread like. Just before baking it I mixed a splash of milk in with the egg whites to make an egg wash and brushed it all over the top of the dough.
When I punched down the dough it shrank quite a bit and didn't rise a whole lot for the second time after I put it in the pan (since we were going to be making french toast out of it I didn't think the traditional braid would be a good idea). So I was incredibly surprised when I opened the oven to check on it 35 minutes later and discovered it that it had more than doubled in size while baking. Next time I will not be deceived by it's small prebaked size, it'll go in two pans!
It wasn't even to the top of the pan when it went in the oven!
The stuffed french toast (cream cheese, yogurt and raspberries for the stuffing) turned out well, the bread was hard to handle because of it's size and shape and we decided the stuffing could have used some sugar but it was still a pretty tasty breakfast. There will be more attempts.
The brioche was unplanned but very fun to make. It's basically the same as challah bread except it's french. I was talking to my roommate's grandmother (an awesome cook/baker) about breads and asked if there was any kind of bread I could make to send home with her. She said she had always wanted to try brioche bread and that she knew it was similar to challah bread but wasn't quite sure how. Turns out the only real difference is butter instead of oil. So to make brioche follow the same recipe above only add 3/4 cup softened (very softened I discovered!) butter in place of the olive oil and only 3/4 cups warm water instead of a whole cup. This time I did braid the bread, because it seemed like it'd be fun and I had never braided dough before. I divided the dough into six equal parts so I could make two braids (I wanted a loaf too after all). The hard part was getting the ends to stick together, they kept trying to pull apart. Once dough is separated it really doesn't like sticking together again. I let the braids rise for about 30-45 minutes before baking them. I also brushed them with the egg wash before baking. Total baking time was around 40 minutes at 350 on a pizza stone (they did not turn into monster braids, they only grew a normal amount in the oven). One of the loaves I did a very loose braid because I was worried about pulling on the dough too much, the second one I did quite a bit tighter and after baking them I think the loose braid looks much better. They taste the same of course but aesthetics do matter sometimes.
I also made two more loaves of my garlic pesto bread, but I've posted about them before. The only difference I tried this time is I found a jar in with the spices at the grocery store that was chopped garlic in olive oil with basil. It was pretty slick to be able to just dump the jar in rather than peeling and pressing a whole bulb of garlic like I usually do. More expensive of course but not too bad, it was around a $1.50 for the jar.
My morning of bread making
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