New challah to end the ennui?

This week, at her suggestion, I visited Chavi’s wonderful bread and cake blog (too much butter – we love butter, but our Shabboses are mostly meat!) and chose her “Challot” challah for the sheer audacity of calling it CHALLAH without any special adjectives.

I will call it “Chavi’s Perfect Balance” challah.

I’m always a little leery of trying one person’s idea of challah, but her criteria seem to be the same as mine – not too eggy, though she also likes not too sweet. I think I don’t personally have an upper limit on the amount of sweetness I can take in a challah. :-)

Anyway, I mixed this up pretty much as shown on her blog. No pics because my eyes are closing; SO tired!

The only thing I did differently is, because she refers to an autolyse phase, I did a “proper” autolyse (I know; I’m a snob) by omitting 25% of the flour, the yeast and the salt. I left it for a good long time; maybe half an hour, before stirring in the rest of the ingredients and beginning the knead.

It was INDEED very soft, sticky dough, but came together nicely with a lot of flour helping it out.

I’ll take pics in the morning; I promise. B’li neder.

Comments

Post a Comment

Okay, guys... I'm turning moderation OFF on all my blogs. I will be patrolling for spam, so play nice!

Know what else you're gonna love?

Baking in Israel? Beware of FAKE condensed milk

Image
If you didn’t know any better – like I didn’t when we first came here – you’d probably assume, with good reason, that both of these tins contained condensed milk: But that’s where you’d be wrong.  Sure, at least at first glance, the Hebrew text is exactly the same: חלב מרוכז וממותק / chalav merukaz umemutak / concentrated sweetened milk.  But the English is different, and therein lies the key difference between the two – the one on the right is FAKE. Here are the ingredients of the real thing (on the left): Milk (55%), sugar (45%).  That’s it.  Pure and simple. Now, here are the ingredients
Read more

Mmm… kichelicious!

Image
Hi!  This is an old post, but I’m still making kichel.  In fact, it’s one of the few baked desserts that have seamlessly managed the transition to life in Israel.  Here’s a newer update on The Secret to Kichelicious Kichel . Drat.  As with almost every other erev-Shabbos baked delicacy I try out, I didn’t get a chance to take a picture when they came out of the oven; by now, of course, 26 hours later, they are ALL GONE. I made BOW TIES!!!  Also known as kichel, also known as egg kichel and also, obscurely, as “eyer kichel.”  Around here, people sometimes call them “nothings,” perhaps to differentiate them from the type of pasta (which I’ve also made) which is also called bowties.  The ones generally called “nothings” are sometimes baked in a square shape with no sugar on top, but there are exceptions. They were super-easy, too, thanks to Joan Nathan’s recipe from A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking (I found the recipe, improbably, at the Calgary Public Library blog (I thought w
Read more

Baking maven Paula Shoyer declares war on kichel. This killer recipe proves her wrong.

Image
Know what the most popular post on this site is, right at this very moment?  By far? It’s a post called “ Mmm… kichelicious .” I adore kichel, the dry unsweetened European cookie that has been a staple of Jewish life since… well, probably since someone’s Bubby needed to make cookies and discovered that she was out of sugar.  Apparently, thousands of people out there on the Internet love kichel and want to know how to make it well at home. But celebrity kosher baker Paula Shoyer does not.  Which is too bad, because in every other way, she’s absolutely perfect.  I enjoyed a baking demo she did yesterday at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.  She did a really great job of preparing a couple of basic recipes that I hope to share with you very soon. But the real reason for her crusade to bring simple, delicious pareve baking recipes to home cooks is because, as she said yesterday, “in the U.S., pareve desserts… are absolutely horrific.” Foremost among
Read more

More delicious kosher morsels!

Show All