Challah

Challah
Originally uploaded by monkeycat238.

Last night Antonia and I went back to our lives as breadmakers. We decided on a very "traditional" bread :) We have made it once or twice before and we both liked it. Of course, I have a long history with this bread (mostly taking place on Friday night with and with the aid of margerine).

1 pkg active dry yeast
3/4 c warm water
1 tbs sugar
1 1/4 tbs margerine, melted
1 tsp salt
1 egg
eggwash (separate from 1 egg above)
2.5-3 c flour

Oven at 375ºC

We let the yeast bloom in 1/4c water and sugar for 10 minutes. We then added 1/2c water (the rest), salt, margerine, egg, and 1-1.5c flour. We beat this with the whip for 5 minutes at which point it was combined well.

We then changed to the dough hook, and slowly added the rest of the flour until it was incorporated - the dough was still sticky when we took it out. After 10 minutes of kneading, we let it rest in a greased bowl for 1hr.

After the hour of rising, we punched it down, divided it into 3 ropes, braided the ropes, and let it sit on a baking sheet for 45 minutes.

Egg washed and into the oven for 30 minutes and done!

It is a very tender bread - I hope one day I can figure out how to get the ropes to become one loaf to a greater degree - I'm sure the scientific method will play into this at some point
Hypothesis
Test
Analyze
Repeat