I've made challah almost every week for years and this is the best one yet! I put the ingredients in in a different order, as I've learned they should be added. Here's what I did: 1. Mix the yeast with 100 degree water and the white sugar and allow to bloom for 5 minutes, or until VERY foamy. 2. Mix in brown sugar, eggs and margarine. 3. Mix in flour and salt From there, I followed the recipe as normal. The challah was done after 30 minutes, so make sure you watch it closely. Cooking it for the 45 minutes the recipe suggest would ruin it in my oven! I added sesame seeds on top instead of poppies. It was just great!
An outstanding recipe by itself. After experimenting, I tweaked it a bit for a presentation-quality crown challah with the following: 1. As others, used half milk and half water 2. Increased both sugars to 1/3 cups 3. Increased salt to 1.5 TBS 4. Added 4 yolks to the 4 whole eggs (color and taste) 5. Added 1/4 Cup honey 6. Added 1 cup golden raisins (soak and drain if dry) 7. Lastly, to ensure height for the crown, last rise and baking was in a 12" round flat bottom pan with a 1" or higher side. Also found that by stretching the braids to long ropes gave an excellent stringy texture when pulled apart for eating
I think this is a very good challah--it turns out light and feathery, but I can't give it 5 stars because it too isn't as good as Challah I in my opinion. Challah I is more dense, but it's soft and has terrific mouth feel. If you want a lighter challah though, this is certainly one to try and it's very good. I sprinkled poppy seeds on top--very pretty.
Our family bakes bread twice weekly and I'm fairly versed in both egg and yeast-only breads. This bread is as light as cotton candy and yet tastes rich on your tongue. It makes great french toast once it has gone stale. Just perfect. The only downfall is that it takes 3 packets of yeast. However yeast comes in a 3 pack and yeast is cheap so I guess that's not a big deal either.
Oh sooo good!! There is nothing like the feeling you get when a recipe makes you feel like a pro!! This is fool proof. I did add a little honey to mine and halved the brown sugar.(it was still sweet) I did everything in my kitchen Aid with the dough hook, (kneaded for 6-7 minutes) it couldnt have been easier. The dough was really sticky like others said but I just used a couple tablespoons extra of flour and a floured surface to form the braided loaves, dont worry about the sticky texture. It turns out beautifully.
OY is this a wonderful and different way to make a challah
One of the best challah recipes I've used-- the loaf was 6x the dough height and had a great sweet but not too sweet texture. It also worked very well in density for the day after french toast. I did change the order I added the ingredients as another reviewer suggested (e.g. yeast 1 c. warm water white sugar wait 5 min then add brown sugar 1 c. water eggs and slowly add in flour and salt.).
I love this recipe. I was raised on Zopf as is eaten in Germany and this is so very much like it. I will add perhaps another quarter cup of sugar and some raisins the next time I make it to make it taste even more like the Zopf I'm used to. It's great with coffee as a light breakfast. But eat it up quickly as it is best the first day...after that it becomes a little stale.
I just finished making this Challah (my very first one) about an hour ago. It's beautiful & fluffy although not as sweet as I thought it would be with the 1/2 cup of sugar. I thought I screwed up because it was still sticky when I let it rise. I was so paranoid about adding too much flour making it stiff and kneading it too much which would make dense. I was able to make 3 loafs out of this batch. I think my converted jewish brother-in-law would be proud of me. Next time I won't be too afraid to add a little more flour or to knead it a little more.
Followed the instruction and I have a few comments. It took more than 7 cups of flower to get the dough elastic enough but not sticky. Secondly while it has risen to twice its size the first and the second time (after braiding it), it came out flat like in the picture. I am used to a bigger challah so I am not sure if baking powder or different type of yeasts were needed.
Baking time was and should be less than 45 minutes or the temp recommendations here are incorrect. The bread came out slightly darker than the picture after 38 minutes. Lastly, while the house filled with wonderful scent of baking, the flavor was not that great. Somewhat sweet but nothing else. I would stick to white sugar only and probably more than a 1/2 cup to give it a slightly sweeter note.
