This is just one of the many times of year when these lovely shiny loaves appear. Steeped in Jewish tradition, served on the Sabbath and for holidays, this egg bread is also enjoyed by folks from many different backgrounds and parts of the globe. A very similar bread is also popular around Easter, often enriched with butter added to the dough (and maybe dyed Easter eggs tucked on top).

I embarked on this project after receiving a request from a friend for a pair of loaves as part of an egg related scavenger hunt she was planning for a group. Sounds like fun!

I’ve made challah on occasion over the years but have never posted on the topic. While there are tons of recipe variations and reams of information about its history and preparation, I barely skimmed the surface in deciding how to approach this. All purpose or bread flour? How many eggs? Whole or yolks? Honey vs sugar? Three or four (or six!) strand braid?

Particularly when I’m baking for an order, I want to be sure that the end result will be tasty. Of course that means a trial or two. I was inspired to do a test between a King Arthur recipe that I’d made in years past (to excellent reviews) and a recipe from a new book I purchased recently entitled “Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives”. I’ve paged through the book’s recipes and am truly enjoying the story written dually by Brits Kitty Tait and her father Al Tait. It’s their story of Kitty’s journey through some difficult times in her young life with bread baking ultimately becoming her salvation. They now own/run “The Orange Bakery” in Watlington, Oxfordshire UK. Cool story.

I won’t focus on recipe details yet, but, suffice it to say, both half loaf trials turned out OK. Kitty’s adds some butter to the dough but the recipes are otherwise quite similar. Both used two eggs for the full recipe unlike the one I ultimately went with.

Perhaps I over baked them a bit since they were a tad dry. With a fine, light crumb, both are excellent spread with a bit of butter/jam, especially toasted. I recommend either for bread pudding or French toast, easy and delicious ways to revive and repurpose.

After a bit more review, I went with an adaptation of the recipe I ultimately turned to - Jeffrey Hamelman’s challah in his book “Bread: A Bakers Book of Techniques and Recipes”. This one uses more egg than many recipes I reviewed along with the usual suspects - flour, vegetable oil, water, honey, salt, yeast.

Let’s get started! I’ll go through the steps, listing ingredients in gram weights but remember you can go to the recipe PDF for equivalent measures and read through it at your leisure.

First have all your ingredients mised out: 600 g all purpose flour, 300 g bread flour, 160 g honey, 2 large eggs plus 5 (or perhaps 6) yolks, 85 g vegetable oil like canola (EVOO is tasty!), 300 g water (tepid/coolish), 17 g instant yeast, 13 g kosher salt.

Place all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. My 6 quart Kitchenaid bowl works well for this. I may have mentioned this in the past but I have an 8 quart commercial Kitchenaid stand mixer. The beauty of it is that not only is the mixer’s motor more heavy duty than a 6 quart, the attachments are much more work-horse like, solid and heavy. And! - they work with my 6 quart bowl that fits on the 8 quart stand! The six quart is my go to size for most bread, croissant or large batches of shortbread or tart doughs. Love it.

I give it a stir up with a spatula to gets things moistened.

Then blend with the dough hook on low speed (stir on a Kitchenaid) for several minutes to incorporate the ingredients.

Now knead on speed 2 for about 6 minutes to develop the gluten. The dough should ball up and pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Give the dough a couple of quick kneads by hand and round it up, then place in a lightly oiled bowl for the first proof.

Let rise in a warm place for 1.5 - 2 hours, gently de-gassing at 1 hour. OPTION: after the first de-gassing, refrigerate the dough for several hours or overnight, de-gassing a couple of more times during the first few hours. The dough is easier to work with/shape when cool, plus you can create your own time table to mesh with your schedule.

For my project I de-gassed at hour one, then refrigerated the dough for an hour and a half (due to my schedule that day!). Then another de-gas and a 45 minute room temperature rise before shaping. Here are the visuals.

Place the risen dough on your work surface - you don’t need much flour at all for the dividing/shaping/braiding. Use a bit if needed, but the dough handles well without being sticky.

For two 3-strand braids, divide the dough in half then each half into three equal pieces. Do a rough, stubby torpedo pre-shape of each piece and let rest 20 minutes covered lightly with plastic. I made two 750 g braids and used the rest of the dough for a mini two strand twist so I could do a taste test.

After the rest, roll each piece into a 14”-ish rope. Set up three pieces for your first braid.

One way to braid is to start in the middle, braid toward one end then flip it and finish braiding from the center to the other end.

**Tuck the ends under to clean things up**

Once both loaves are braided, place them on a parchment lined sheet pan, lightly cover with a cotton towel and cover that with plastic wrap. This protects the dough from drying out but also reduces moisture accumulation between the braids by eliminating direct contact with the plastic wrap on the dough surface.

Let rise for two hours. Toward the end of the rise heat the oven to 375ºF.

These are looking great after the two hours. Thoroughly egg wash the surfaces.

You can see my mini twist on the right, sprinkled with poppy and sesame seeds.

Bake about 30 minutes until golden brown. Cool on grids.

Serve when ready. The challah loaves freeze well - remove from the freezer a couple of hours or so ahead to thaw at room temperature.

Here’s a look at my mini twist. I tried it with a schmear of butter and sandwiched it with a bit of ham and cheese. Good crumb, tender and tasty!

The report from those who received the full sized loaves was a thumb’s up. Good deal!

Just a final bit of nature for you. Happy spring!

**cherry blossoms in *le jardin des plantes*, paris**

OK. Here we are in part 2 of my Kouign-amann review. Part 1 covered shaping two versions of individual pastries. This time it’s the full sized cake version, more traditional in Brittany for slicing and enjoying at breakfast or afternoon tea. Inspired by one of King Arthur Baking Company’s “Bake of the Week” recipes back in January, 2022, I’ve had it in my “I’m-going-to-try-this” pile ever since. My how time flies!

I ended up making two versions of this cake: the first (thanks to Andrew Janjigian and the above mentioned KA Baking Co) utilized a unique approach to the sugar/butter incorporation. I thought it rather messy and the end result not as flaky, lofty or tasty as that made with my usual recipe. If you’d like to give it a try, just click the link on Andrew’s name and you can learn about his approach/recipe. There are always different ways to do things!

**my result with andrew janjigian’s version**

For the second using my base recipe (enough for two full sized cakes), I used half of the dough for a single cake and the rest went toward cute small spirals that are absolutely delicious!! I simply couldn’t help it. They’re stashed in my freezer as we speak.

Let’s create a full sized kouign-amann! We’re proceeding with the nearly completed dough, already put through three 3-folds rolling with flour. Now it’s ready for the last sugar-rolled 3-fold.

First prep an 8” cake pan by buttering the bottom and sides then lining with a round of parchment large enough to leave an edge above the pan’s rim. This makes it easier to lift out after baking. Then butter and sugar the parchment. You can do this ahead and set it aside.

Roll the dough out length wise using sugar on the rolling surface as well as on top.

**ready for last three fold with sugar**

Once you complete the last fold, let the dough rest at room temperature (NOT in the fridge) lightly wrapped in parchment for 20-30 minutes and then proceed with shaping/proofing/baking.

Remember I’ve made a full recipe so I divide the dough in half, using one half for one cake. You can make two cakes if you want, but I took a different route.

Roll a half portion into a rough-ish 8-9” square (still rolling in sugar) and fold the corners into the center.

Turn the dough over onto the sugar dusted work surface so the corners/seams are down and roll out again (using sugar) to an approximately 8” squarish round. Don’t be too fussy about the shape - I figured it would spread out and bake into the confines of the pan, so I just went with it.

Lift the dough into the pan and tuck it in as best you can. Cut straight lines diagonally across the surface to create a diamond pattern and sprinkle with sugar.

Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap or a damp towel and let proof 45-60 minutes. Meanwhile heat the oven to 400ºF (convection).

I used the other half of my dough to create a dozen spirals, rolling the dough out to about 10”x10”, cutting one-ish inch wide strips, rolling ‘em up and tucking into doubled paper baking cups rather than muffin tins. The paper cups give each a boundary so they don’t bake up against each other. My hope was they would bake more uniformly golden this way (I was right!).

My rise ended up at about 50 minutes. Time to bake!

I gave them 20 minutes, turned the temp down to 375ºF and rotated the trays. The spirals were well baked in another 3-4 minutes so out they came. I gave the cake an additional 10 minutes and then covered it with foil for another 10 minutes to avoid over browning. There were still some paler dough sections in the center that I wanted a bit more done.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: all ovens are different and it’s up to you to check on how things are going in there. You can do it. Let your recipe be your guide but your eyes, nose and touch be part of it too.

Oooh! Swirls and whirls of caramelized goodness. Reminds me of some of the rocks we saw in the southwest’s national parks last autumn.

Lift the cake out of the pan by grasping the paper edges and set it on a wire cooling grid.

Let it cool a bit and then . . . . . the key for me when testing out any baked laminated pastry is the initial slice to check out the layers. Fingers crossed!

While my initial concern at first inspection was for a doughy under-bake, these layers came out with a certain creaminess that compliments the caramelized exterior - flaky, light and oh so delicious.

Of course, Steve and I had to have our requisite taste test, a decadent pairing of a slightly warm slice with homemade vanilla ice cream. Swoon!

The spirals baked nicely too and turned out just the right size for a delightful morning treat. I peeled them out of the papers pretty soon after baking so as to avoid caramel-y sticking.

**love these - like a petite seashell!**

Always itching to test out the staying power of baked goods, a few days later I pulled a few of the spirals out of the freezer for a morning oven warm up for family guests. Delicious. There were two left which we wrapped in parchment and dared to leave out at room temp until the next morning. Another short warm up and they were still great. Good deal!

I had some of my first Janjigian test slices in the freezer along with some of the K-amann slices made with my recipe so Steve and I did another test a couple of weeks later. After a thaw/warm up of about 15 minutes in a 325º oven, we found the first version (seen on the right below) greasy, tough and not very tasty. The second was flaky with a nice texture and all around better flavor.

On a final note, here’s a bit about cleaning the work surface after the sugar rolling. It gets pretty messy. I prefer butcher block (my fave for all things dough) but other surfaces like Corian, granite, stainless are all much easier to clean. I do have a large polycarbonate type cutting board that I can use too, but I opted for the wood this time.

NOTE: This is about the only situation in which I rinse my rolling pin quickly under warm water to get the gooey sugar off. Pat it dry and let it sit out on a counter to dry fully. Otherwise after usual dough rolling in flour I simple rub any dough particles and flour off the pin until the next time.

For the sugary surface I use my bench or bowl scraper to push off all the loose debris into a waste basket. Then rub the surface with pieces of lemon, sprinkle with kosher salt and even a little flour to help soak up the moisture and let sit for awhile.

Rub it around to give the surface a gentle scouring, then scrape all the stuff off with a bowl scraper, wipe with a damp cloth and let air dry. The butcher block likes a mineral-oiling once in awhile too, which I might do every few months.

Lemon TIP: when I’ve zested lemons for whatever purpose, I then juice them, pour the juice into ice cube trays and freeze. The cubes are great when you need a tablespoon or two of juice for a cooking or baking project.

I then chop up the zested lemons into chunks and bag them up for the freezer. Throw a few into the garbage disposal every once in awhile to freshen things up or use a few chunks for the above cleaning process.

I think I’ve said enough folks! Happy spring and happy baking!!

Baking with the French Tarte

Baking with the French Tarte

What's new in the French Tarte's kitchen

Baking with the French Tarte

Challah

Kouign-amann: Part 2

Baking with the French Tarte