Simply beautiful!

Copy of challahs 002I have, with great sadness and resignation, given up on sourdough for the time being, at least until our house regularly goes over 20 degrees celsius during the day.

This week’s tweaked challahs (based on this recipe) are looking good so far. Soft, soft, soft, but they look perfectly-done in the centre.

I suspect they’re the same as what I made two weeks ago, but I got busy and forgot to record any specific impressions about what and how I made those ones.

So here’s the formula this time around.

For anyone looking for an EASY challah, this recipe is no-knead but it is not no-work. I am hoping to capture the best of all possible bread worlds: lots of moisture, no initial knead step, no food processor, and several long ferments to improve flavour. We shall see if I have struck gold…

Jennifer’s Experimental Do-Not-Knead Challah

  • 30g active dry yeast (or maybe I used 35g?)
  • 4 cups warm tap water
  • 45g kosher salt
  • 200g white sugar
  • 1 cup vegetable oil (canola)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1700g all-purpose flour

Step 1: Stir

Combine the water with yeast, salt, sugar, eggs, oil (in any order). Stir well.

And then – here’s the thing I love! – dump in the flour, just toss it all there into the MONSTER dough bucket, and stir until it gets too thick to stir.

Then, seal up the dough bucket well and roll it around on the table or floor (a little tough because the handle of the bucket tries to get in the way). Roll until dough is fairly well combined.

Make sure you “unsnap” the lid of the bucket slightly! If it is completely sealed, the bucket will expand and perhaps the dough will not. That happened overnight, and this morning the top and bottom of the bucket were bulging.

Let stand for 2 hours.

Step 2: Fold

Flour the top of the dough and dump it out onto a well-floured tabletop. Do not punch down!

With a bench scraper and floured hands, fold the dough 4-5 times. Dump it back in the bucket.

Step 3: Ferment

Refrigerate until the next morning.

In the morning, let dough come to room temperature in the bucket, maybe 1-2 hours.

Step 4: Fold Again

Flour the top of the dough and dump it out onto a well-floured tabletop. Do not punch down!

With a bench scraper and floured hands, fold the dough 4-5 times. Dump it back in the bucket.

Let stand for 2 hours.

Step 5: Form Challahs

(rushing now; Shabbos is soon!)

The folding steps should have made the dough workable enough that on a well-floured surface with well-floured hands, you can form it into whatever nice neat braids you like to make.

Let rise 1-2 hours.

Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Mmm…. hopefully, Step 6 will be EAT AND ENJOY.

Good Shabbos!!!

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