Homemade Challah

There might be a bread baker, deep inside me screaming to get out.  My friend Sarah Jane is doing this awesome project where she challenges herself to make a different kind of bread every single week.  This past week was week 11 of her project & she tackled Ciabatta.  I've enjoyed seeing what she makes every week and this past weekend I decided to make some bread too.

My friend Anree is also a wonderful baker and when she heard (several years ago) that I wanted to learn how to bake bread she gave me The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger for my birthday.  I'll admit that I've had this book for 3 years and while I've made a few things out of it I've mostly just read through it and thought "wouldn't it be nice...".  Enough of thinking....time to DO it!  

So with the inspiration from Sarah Jane's project and a book that taught Anree how to bake bread I chose Challah bread. I don't think I've ever eaten Challah before but I was commited!

For me the scariest part about bread baking is the yeast. The water temperature has to be just right, the yeast has to be good and the moons of Saturn have to be in alignment.  My hot water tank was acting up and I actually had to microwave the water to get it warm enough....105 to 115 degrees and work fast!  I will admit to cheers of joy when I looked in the work bowl of my mixer and found this:

FOAMY YEAST!!  Wonderful!

The other thing that scares me about bread is kneading.  When Anree came for a visit in 2007 we made bread and she showed me how to knead.  She was a wonderful teacher. The bad thing is that I just don't have the space required to knead bread, I have to be creative about it.  This time there was no creativity involved...I let the mixer do it.  Of course that was only after I guessed where the other 1.5 cups of flour was supposed to go when the recipe didn't say when to add it.

I need a class to teach me about how dough feels.  I was supposed to knead this until it was "shaggy".  It was sticky so I added 1 tablespoon of flour at a time.  I did knead it by hand for a few moments after the mixer was done and I remembered what Anree had taught me.  When I get a bigger kitchen I'm kneading dough by hand more, it was very relaxing.

When bread rises in my house it goes in the laundry room with the door closed. Nothing like banishing the dough from the kitchen.  The laundry room is a warm spot in my house and the dough took off!  Here is the dough ready to head in for the first rise.

The recipe called for a 2 - 2.25 hour first rise.  At 1.25 hours the dough was (over) doubled!

After the first rise I had to punch the dough to deflate it. I felt bad punching it since I'd already banished it to the laundry room but I had to do it.

The second rise which was supposed to take 1 - 1.25 hours was done in 45 minutes.  After the second rise it was time for braiding. I think I did pretty good although there was a difference between the first and fourth loaf!  Hensperger recommended braiding from the center out on one side then turning it and braiding from the center out on the other side. I learned how to braid backward for this little project.
 

After the third rise (yes 3!) the loaves were ready to head into the oven.

At this point the house already smelled wonderful from the dough rising but when the bread started to bake the smell became even more amazing.  Why hasn't some candle company made a candle that smells like baking bread?

After 40 minutes the loaves were done. I was surprised to find that they actually sounded hollow when I knocked on them, like the recipe said.  After they cooled a bit and I cut the first one I found that it looked like....bread!  It also tasted like bread! I think Shane ate an entire loaf himself this weekend - which is fine by me, I take that as a compliment!

I felt a great sense of accomplishment with this bread. It was a time commitment (cut short by the amazing dough-rising laundry room!) and an adventure but it showed me that there is a bread baker inside that I need to let come out a bit more often!