Braided Egg Bread

Awesome recipe. I made one huge loaf and everyone thought it was fake. Mine did not look like the picture...it looked like a professional bread, not at all homemade. It had a wonderful, mildly sweet taste. One hint...if you braid for one large loaf, remove your top oven rack. This thing comes to life once it starts baking.

Excellent recipe. I saw that another baker thought theirs came out dry. I add four tablespoons of dry potato flakes and it keeps softer longer. Adjusting the flour make make the bread too light to hold up. Traditionally, I make Challah with one huge braid on the bottom and tuck a tiny braid of four strands onto the top. I also use a bit of yellow food coloring to enhance the 'egg bread' appearance. Using an egg wash over the top after rising makes the loaf shiny and helps the sesame seeds to stick. Great entry!

Very, very good!!!! Everything went according to plan. It made two HUGE loaves as big as large cookie sheets. I'm glad I split the dough in half because my oven wouldn't have been big enough otherwise! LOL I gave the extra loaf to my neighbor and she loved it and thought it was too pretty to cut.

Delicious! I only used 9.5 cups of flour instead of 11 and it turned out perfect. It made 2 HUGE loves so split this recipe in two. Definately in my favorites file.

This is a family favorite. Only problem w/ this recipe is that we have no baking pan big enough to make a loaf that huge (who does, except a proffessional bakery?) So I cut the recipe in half and the loaf fits nicely on an average size pan.

If I could have given it 10 stars, I would have! Despite numerous glitches in the preparation of this wonderful bread, it was perfect as it came from the oven! Ease in preparation, long-lasting freshness, delightful taste and texture have made this a real keeper at my house. What did I do wrong, you ask? Well, I down-sized it to one loaf, but failed to notice that the measurements in the body of the preparation instructions weren't changed. When I saw 'add 1/2 c water,' I did; and then realized I had gone by the original size. Oops! So, I changed it to make 2 loaves...mistake # 2 was assuming I had enough flour for the bigger quantity...Had to make a quick run for another bag of the white stuff...despite these 'operator errors,' my bread turned out beautifully, and I got rave reviews from all of the friends and family who ate it...even 4 days later. It makes fantastic French toast, too. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe.

Just made this bread. I cut the recipe in half since its just me and my husband here to eat it. My bread turned out huge but really yummy. The house smells great too. Haha! I did have to add about another 1/2 cup of flour because it was still too sticky and did forget to save an egg to make an egg wash but it still turned out great. Thanks for the recipe!

Wonderful flavor. For my large family I had to double the batch to bake 2 braids instead of one. (My husband & I have 6 daughters & 11 sons, 7 of our sons live at home ages 23 down to 7. Can they ever eat, especially homemade bread from scratch! (Thank goodness for our double oven - we bake one braid in the top oven & the other braid in the lower oven.) This is a pretty bread that is perfect any time of the year. It is a nice variety from traditional loaf bread.

Wow! This bread will make you a star in the kitchen. My farm makes this with our fresh products and this sells like crazy. This bread is worth the time and love it takes to prepare it. Don't shy away. I work the entire recipe by hand and it produces beautiful results. I like the tip about throwing in a tablespoon of instant potato flakes. When this gets out of the oven I like taking honey butter and rubbing it into the loaf. The shine with the egg white and the aroma makes those passing by weak at the knees! Enjoy!

Made some lovely bread (two very large loaves...could easily have made 3 or 4 regular-sized loaves). Only complaint is that bread was a bit dry/dense...next time I make it I will probably reduce to 9 or 10 cups of flour.

AMAZING RECEIPE! BUT CUT IT IN HALF! First bread iver ever made from scratch, i didnt realize how big it would be though! My wife loves it so im glad i made 2 loaf's. First one was gone in 1 day. even though the recipe calls for 11 cups of flour, alot of it depends on the type you use. Just keep adding flour till the dough becomes thick and asy to handle. my first batch only used 9 1/2.

A wonderful recipe. I made 4 average size loaves from this recipe. They are wonderful Easter gifts. Everyone remarked how beautiful they looked.

This is an awesome bread!! It has such a light, sweet flavor. This was only my 2nd time trying to make a yeast bread and it turned out fine. I made two braided loaves and they were huge! I can't imagine how big it would be if you only made one loaf. The two loaves did not fit in the oven at the same time, so I put one in the fridge while the other was baking. I didn't know if that would harm the bread or not but it didn't. It turned out just like the other loaf that didn't go in the fridge beforehand. This is a fantastic recipe! This is a great starter recipe for yeast breads. I now have the confidence to try making other kinds of bread.

If I could give it more stars I would! This bread is AMAZING and it was SOOOOOOOO much fun to make!!!! I but the dough in half and made 2 HUGE and BEAUTIFUL loaves! My husband said that he wants me to make this bread instead of buying bread at the store!! I'm curious to find out how it tastes made with whole wheat flour. I am HOOKED!

amazing. this was my first try at Challah bread and it came out perfect. I halved the recipe and it made a huge loaf. I will make the halved recipe into 2 loafs next time. We loved it so much we eneded up pretty much eating just this bread and butter for dinner!

This bread turned out great!! A couple things worth mentioning...I used my kitchen aid mixer to knead the dough. Dough was quite sticky, added more flour, and still was what I considered a sticky dough. Raised beautifully. I used 1/3 of the dough to make cinn. buns, and other two thirds to make two loafs ( I braided and added egg to make baby doll bread) Loaves were huge, next time I will make three loaves. Nice texture and flavor.

I halfed the recipe and it made one HUGE loaf. I could have made two smaller ones. It was so easy and so good! My kids LOVED it....it was gone by the next evening!

This is a WONDERFUL challah recipe. You can half it if you don't want quite as much bread. I knead mine in my large kitchen aid and I substitute honey for the last 1/2 C of water. It makes for a sweeter more authentic challah. I also add about 1/2 tsp salt due to the added sweetness from the honey. You can make it just as is and it's still wonderful and makes amazing french toast the next day!

Loved it. I ended up doing a 6 strand Challah braid that I found on youtube. It was too big for any cookie sheet of mine, so I ended up cutting it in half lengthwise. It was still beautiful. Baked perfectly.

I halved the recipe and it still made a HUGE and delicious loaf... it was the prettiest bread EVER i am not a bread baker... most of my breads fail BUT this recipe ROCKS I even used fat free soy milk in the recipe! it turned out SO well it really was the highlight of my families Easter table. (for me at least)

this bread is great! I put in the zest of 2 large lemons, and made a lemon glaze for the top instead of sesame seeds. yum!

This is a great and easy challah recipe. I have made as many as 6 loaves with the recipe. Try sprinkling with cinnamon sugar and putting raisins in the dough as well!

I have never made challah before and I think it was a success. I did make a few updates: change the serving size to 15, proof the yeast with 1tbs sugar, substituted honey for sugar, and sprinkled sugar on top of the loaf. I did feel like recipe was missing something though.

I've made this several times. Everyone LOVES IT. It isn't terribly difficult, just time consuming, though I did make it once and it came out not as good. I think that was do to the fact that it was freezing in our house (winter time, heater not working) and I don't think the bread rose well. I usually just serve with home made honey butter (melt butter on stove. place container in ice bath, poor melted butter into container, add honey to butter, stir mixture as it solidifies so that it doesn't separate while cooling.) Note: It DOES make a lot of bread. First time I tried to make a half loaf of it, it barely fit in the oven.

The best bread ever! Made two huge loaves and used them to make subs for a party. Huge hit. Followed the recipe exactly and the bread came out perfect. Will definitely make again.

Thanks to the easy-to-follow directions, and for all of the helpful hints from previous reviews, this recipe was my first successful yeast bread! Everyone loved it, not a crumb was left! :)

Truly yummy, and stunning on the table. I scaled it down to 20 servings, and it was perfect. Thanks for a great recipe!

Awesome! I made 20 servings or 1/3 recipe and it made a huge 2 foot braid, baked for 40 minutes. I do like my challah eggier, so next time would use 4 eggs instead of the 2.

I made this to give to my in-laws in my attempts to win them over. If this doesn't do it, nothing will. I made 2 loaves, one for my mother-in-law and father-in-law, the other for my sister-in-law and her husband. My husband came home to the finished product only to be disappointed that they weren't for us. My sister-in-law ate 1 whole loaf by herself before her daughter and husband even knew it was there. My MIL and FIL devoured their loaf in 1 day, saying how delicious and pretty it was. I will definitely make this again as it turned our so well the first time (I followed these directions exactly), but it was very time consuming, so until then, my poor husband will continue to request and wait.

I became a member of this site just so I could review this recipe! This is the best bread I have ever eaten!! The first time I baked it, it yielded 2 massive loaves of beautiful braided bread. Since braided bread is more decorative than useful, I started shaping it into a simple loaf. The bread has a wonderful light sweetness and I thought it would be ideal for making cinnamon rolls, so I rolled it out after the second rise, spread my cinnamon/sugar/butter mix on it, sliced them up, and set them in the pan to rise for the last time before baking. Perfection! I love, love, love this recipe. My husband and I also love eating buns, so I'll shape the dough out into buns every now and then too... Such a versatile and super delicious recipe! Thanks sooooo much for posting it!

This bread looked beautiful and was fluffy and good....but I think I may add more salt or something. I wanted a bit of flavor and it didn't seem to have any.

This bread was delicious. I would suggest that you half the recipe, otherwise it makes two huge loaves. But this recipe was absolutely delicious and I cannot wait to make it again.

Incredible!! Delicious!! We know nothing about baking and it was our first time making bread. My husband and I attempted this very tiring but extremely worthwhile, (and will do it many more times,) baking expedition. We made it into 2 loaves and the only thing we changed is no sesame, we didn't have any. Soooo good. We feel like professionals. I cannot believe how big they grew. 1 loaf would have been scary. We made the 'baked french toast' with it the next morning, from this site. Mmmmm Thank you for this, it gave us a lot of confidence in the kitchen.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING BREAD! Recipe makes 2 giant loaves though. =) Lots of work, but well worth it.

Easy to make and pretty good flavor, but a little bit dry. Lovely presentation though.

Mixed up the full recipe and made one braided loaf, 2 one pound loaves and a pan of dinner rolls. Rave reviews from all who tried it. I forgot to lessen the cook time, but still came out great.

A beautiful and impressive loaf. I made it with 100% whole wheat flour and it turned out perfectly. Thank you!

im not sure where i went wrong? i followed the recipe exactly..... anddddd.. its not to my liking. for the time and efforts (and horrible end result), id much sooner buy a loaf from the bakery!

Very good bread. Decided to do a 6 strand braid-- it came out beautifully and tasted great! Well worth the effort.

WOW - what an amazing loaf of bread that i made. I made this for easter sunday with my 2 children. I made it into a ring and the only change i made was that i added about a tablespoon of fennel. I can't tell you how amazing it was. Everyone not only loved the bread but they were amazed at the size and taste. I will make this again and again!

This bread was very tasty, but once cut it dried out very quickly. I will try adding potato flakes the next time as another reviewer mentioned. Otherwise, it was a really good bread.

I tired this recipe because I wanted to make bread and I had these ingredients and it had good reviews. This was easy to make and it looks great. The bread taste OK...not great...just OK I thought it was a little dense..but nothing bad

I modified this recipe a little owing to the fact I didn't have packages of yeast. I used 1 tablespoon of bread machine yeast for 4 cups of flour. It worked out very well and almost tasted better than a bakery.

I am updating this review. I made it again, followd the recpe exactly and ended up with 3 beautiful braided loaves. I'm sure in my earlier effort (below) I used the wrong amount of yeast, and possibly other ingredients. Don't do that! I don't know what happened, or what I did wrong. I scaled the recipe down, using the online tool, and used 2 pks of yeast and the proportional amount of ingredients. I followed the directions exactly. I even portioned out the amount of water/milk to use at the beginning and along the way. The dough was soft, as indicated in the recipe, and rose as I expected it to. But it was so soft that even after it rose to double or more its original size, it was still so soft that it was impossible to braid! It was closer to slime than braidable bread dough. I worked in more flour as I tried to stiffen it up enough to braid, and eventually gave up and just sort of "fake braided" it so it looked a little closer to a braided egg bread. It tasted ok after baked, but I'm sure that the extra flour I added affected the flavor. Has anyone else had trouble braiding this? I may try it again in the future. I did this on a very busy and stressful Christmas Eve, so maybe I slipped up somewhere. I've had success with other breads before, but this one was a real challenge.

Very easy to make and made for an incredible looking center piece for my buffet. Unlike braiding hair, you don't actually lose any length in the three rolls you've made, so be careful not to make the loaf too large for the pan you're going to bake it in or the oven it will be placed in.

Maybe it's just me, but the sugar should've been doubled. It smelled great, but had kind of a boring taste. As some of the other reviewers mentioned, these loaves turned out gigantic...would definitely advise making four smallish/normal size loaves instead of just the two.

I made four small loaves out of this recipe. Delicious! The whole house smelled great for hours, and I froze a couple loaves to eat at a later time.

made this except added 1/4 cup of honey. Made a HUGE Loaf and is wonerful. Sprinked poppey seeds on top. Wonderful loaf, the best I've ever made. Made it in my kitchen aid. Will make it again as my everday bread. The best bread I've ever had.

I'm in trouble now because this bread turned out so good we're having a hard time staying out of it. I changed nothing and ended up making one huge loaf and one average size loaf and so I cut the big one into three sections and froze after baking. The texture and flavor are so good! Next time I will try to get 3 or 4 average size loaves. I much prefer to make a big batch and freeze than to try to carve out the time to make it more often. Thanks for the great bread, I posted a pic!

Excellent and easier than I'd thought it would be.A very light moist and great tasting bread which is a little bit sweet but not overly so.I'll make this again.

Excellent recipe. I did not use the sesame seeds. I also made 2 loaves because I found the dough easier to braid when it was a thinner rope.

I halved this recipe and still came about with two large loaves! It was good and looked great; it did NOT last long in this house!

This was a true treat for us with eggs, butter and salt in the dough. A splurge for the holidays and we were not disappointed! This bread is delicious. My brother said it was the best bread he has ever tasted. (I suspect he made off with the other loaf as it mysteriously went missing after dinner! Now there's a compliment if I ever got one!) The recipe states that this is for one large loaf and with 11 cups of flour I bet it would have been HUGE! I divided the dough in half and braided two loaves. They were quite large on their own. I brushed the loaves with just some beaten egg yolk for that deep brown, lacquer look. They were very pretty and most definitely a bread I will make again for another holiday.

Turned out pretty well. I used some organic whole wheat flour from here in CO, ditched the seasame seeds, used less flour, and instead of glazing it in just egg, I used egg whites, lemon juice, and melted butter, and that was great! The crust was nice and crispy, and the inside was soft and chewy.

Great bread,very simple to make. I did a six braid, which I thought would be difficult and time consuming. VERY easy. I watched a 2 min video on 6 strand braiding. So simple, can't wait to make again. Also, I cut the recipe in half and it still made 2 nice size loaves.

Very fluffy and delicious, i made 2 large loafs, 1 medium, and 3 small loafs out of it. Only thing different i did was add a tablespoon of gluten than filled the rim up with regular flour.

I halved this recipe, double the sugar, and added 1 TBSP of crisco to the batter while mixing and mine came out absolutely wonderful! Got great reviews and many requests already! Not only is it gorgeous and impressive looking physically, it was incredibly delicious! Thanks for the great recipe!

I loved this bread!!! it was crispy and sweet all together! my Mom who is the bread maker was really proud of me and loved it!

Let me just say you have to try this bread not only because it taste so good,not just because it is so soft but because any bread dough that you mass up and it still make a big pretty tasty bread had to be the best. I made this bread added more sugar,honey and did everything else the way the recipes said too and them I shaped my bread to do let it rise for the last time and feel to sleep and when I got up my bread look so bad it had lost it's shape and was a round blob I was so up set with my self but I reshaped it to see would it rise again and it did and came out so soft and pretty,tasty. Thanks so much for posting this wonderful bread I will make again and again...Terry137 ps. I will be posting my picture of this bread

Wonderful recipe! I will make this over and over again! Despite messing up a few of the directions (I misread something and put all of the ingredients in one bowl instead of putting it in separate bowls then mixing it together) it turned out perfect! I thought it wouldn't rise at first, but it did eventually! I can't wait to try this bread with some chocolate and toppings. The outside tastes as good as the inside, and the bread is very soft. If the bread doesn't rise I advise you to check the date of the yeast, if it expired, the bread will not rise.

Beautiful and delicious!!! I cut the recipie in half and it still makes a large loaf. The dough is great and very easy to work with.

My first time making braided egg bread and it turned out perfect. There are only four of us, so I cut the recipe in half.

Absolutely 5 stars in my book.. I've been making this bread to the recipe for about 4 years now with rave reviews.. Thanks!

Made this bread for the first time for Easter this year. After making into a braid and it doubled in size, we thought the dough was going to take over the kitchen. Huge does not describe this dough - we need a much larger word. After baking, however, the bread did disappear in a very short period of time. It was excellent, just a little scary at first!

This recipe is wonderful, the bread is AMAZING! I followed the measurements to a T, but divided the dough into 2 braids. *I also only baked it for about 30 min. & it was done & still very moist! It came out so pretty that I can't wait to make it for friends. Great recipe, thanks!

This recipe is perfect. I used Pioneer all purpose flour and let the eggs get to room temp. I like to top my bread with seeds and coarse salt. This time I used poppy, sesame and caraway seeds with sea salt. The loaves are enormous. I braided two of them and put them into large bread pans. I did flour and oil the pans and I put cornmeal on the bottom. I baked at 325 after initially heating to 350 and it took only 28 mins. I put a tablespoon of honey in with the yeast and water to feed the yeast. I found it took only about 10 cups of flour but I did use 2 cups of whole wheat flour in that mix.

I am just learning how to cook and have never made homemade bread of any sort before, but I thought this recipe was pretty simple and straightforward, and my challah came out beautiful! One of my favorite smells in the world is baking bread, and it tasted as good as it smelled. A little too hard on the outside for some reason (maybe I didn't let it rise long enough before glazing?) but the inside was soft and moist! Thanks for the upload marilou!

wonderful recipe! made two huge loaves and was delicious! Will use this recipe again :)

made this and wow it was a hit! Love this bread and the braiding makes it look fantastic :) My friends and family were ecstatic about it.

Delicious! We made this for our first Sabbath meal together last night and my husband and daughter both loved it. Thank you for sharing this.

THIS IS THES BEST RECIPE I hve found for bread on allrecipes. However I use it to make dinner rolls. They turn out so tall and fluffy. I also usued it to make cinnamon rolls and they turned out great as well.

this is the only bread i now make

Fresh eggs make this recipe even better, if that is possible! I was not much of a bread maker until now. This recipe is definately hard to mess up, beautiful, and tastes great! My 9 and 5 year old love to shape it with me!

I'm a very occasional bread maker, so I am always a little worried that I'm going to mess something up. However, this was easy and turned out perfect! It was a very tasty bread and looked beautiful! No one could believe that I made such a giant loaf! Thanks!

NOTICE: 11 cups of flour!! 60 servings! It makes a LOT of bread. I didn't notice until I was adding flour. It made a very large regular sized loaf (typical loaf pan) and a massive braid the size of a thanksgiving turkey. Also, doesn't really taste eggy at all. Just like regular white bread, though very tasty!

Delicious and so easy to make. It looked like it was made at a specialty bakery!

The recipe was ENORMOUS! It mad two huge loaves. It was very good but a little dry, so I think next time I will try a previous tip and add potato flakes. I did brush the top fo one with egg white and honey, and the other with egg white and cinnamon and sugar. Made them much better, but I think next time I will incorporate the items into the dough as well.

This bread was DELICIOUS!! I halved the recipe, and still got an enormous loaf; next time I'll make 2 loaves from the half recipe. I did also double the amount of sugar, and it turned out perfect. I'll definitely be making these to give to friends on special occasions. Thank you!

I cut the recipe in half to the best of my abilities and made a "smaller" loaf, it still turned out huge, following the recipe to a T. The loaf tastes great and looks beautiful. Definitely a keeper!

I only wanted a small loaf so I made one quarter of the recipe and shaped it differently because of its small size and just for a change of pace. This had the flavor I was looking for along with a wonderful texture. The small loaf could feed 8 people easily.

It is delicious ....and made two HUGE loaves.

I am confused as to which bread I made a couple years ago and thought this was it. Although it is really good and easy to make it didn't have the flavor I was looking for.

I think a lot of the flop was my fault, I've only made bread once before, which also didn't turn out very well. The instructions were clear, I thought, but I ended up with a sticky mess of dough that was terrible to work with. I added almost a cup and a half more flour than what it called for (I change the serving size in half so it wasn't enormous), but I didn't want rock hard bread, so it was still extremely sticky. There was no way I could split it into three portions and braid it, I had enough trouble getting it out of the bowl onto the tray to bake it. It looked nothing like a loaf and after the last rise it flattened out into a big blob. It tasted ok, but was kinda hard and bland, probably from all of the extra flour. I don't fault the recipe, seems like a lot of other people had success, but I didn't think it was a good beginner bread recipe. But is any yeast bread easy for a beginner? It's probably just me.

Tasted okay but mine turned out terrible...i must have done something wrong.

OH I am soooooo happy with how it turned out! Impressed everyone. I made 2 loaves, a pan of rolls, and some pigs in a blanket (just took a pack of hot dogs and rolled dough thin and then enclosed the hot dog) I cooked them all at the same time but took the rolls out at 35 minutes and the pigs in a blanket out at 40 minutes. I am uploading photos so you can see how proud I am!

This was ok. I've had better egg bread. I made two loaves instead of one. I thought it was on the dry side. I'll try other recipes in the future.

I baked this today. It came out incredible. But I listened to some other reviews t used less flour. I think I used 7-8 cups of flour...I actually can't remember how many I used, but I stopped when the dough became stiff and less sticky. Also I added flour when i was kneading the dough, adding approx 2 more cups, so most likely around 9 cups. When I was kneading the dough I added some honey in. I dug a whole in the dough and squeezed in so be honey the mashed it all up again. I added 2 more honey drizzled while kneading. The dough could make 2 large loaves or 1 giant, but I made it into 6 smaller spiral rolls. This us one of the best challah breads I have ever tasted. I will definitely keep this recipe around.

I followed the recipe exactly; it made two huge loaves and they turned out wonderful. I used the dough hook attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer to knead the dough and there was so much that it barely fit in my mixing bowl. I wouldn't know how it keeps... it was gone at the end of dinner. Everyone commented on its distinctive taste and how it would make great sandwich bread for any leftover Easter ham. Unfortunately we will not know. :)

Fantastic!!❤ I added 2 handfuls of extra flour to the mixer when it was being kneaded for 15 minutes to help make it not so sticky. This recipe is awesome and everyone loved it. Had to make it again 2 days later. I just wish the whole process didnt take 4+ hours!😂

Delicious! A Jewish friend said it tastes like what they used to buy at the bakery when he was little. Use honey instead of sugar Increase salt to 1 Tbsp. Doesn't need to be cooked to a super deep brown unless you like dry bread. This recipe made 4 LARGE braids that each fill approximately one cookie sheet. I used the dough of one along with frozen apple pie filling to make a fruit braid that was delicious when drizzled with a simple butter/milk/powdered sugar frosting. Roll out the dough to cover your cookie sheet, lay filling down the center, snip the edges (2" deep, 1" wide) and cross cross those pieces over the filling, tucking the ends toward the middle first. Pinch seams along the side if needed to contain filling.

I made this today and it was awesome. It's just me and my husband and so I halved the recipe, it was perfect. My husband is a big bread man and this was one of his favorites, first time out. I wouldn't change a thing. Thank you for a wonderful recipe.

My boyfriend loves this bread. It's so easy I make it once a week now

My family and I LOVED this bread I am definitely going to make it again!

Very light and soft interior, easy recipe that tastes great will make it again.

Turned out great!! Made the dough in my bread machine. I only made 1/2 the recipe and ended up with a huge loaf, next time I will make two loaves from the 1/2. Everyone loved it! Thanks for sharing your recipe!!

This bread is wonderful! Great recipe to learn to make bread with. Fun to make, better to eat.

I am so glad i chose this recipe to serve to company. Not only is it delicious but it's beautiful. I halved the recipe and made one huge braid. I can't imagine using a full recipe for one braid! Who would have a pan big enough?! It cooked in 35 minutes at 350. I will definately make this again. The only thing I might do differently is to add a little extra salt but it is great as is.

Really yummy bread! My friend made this recipe for everyone several times now and each time it was gone in a flash.

Help! The first time I made this bread it was beautiful. The second time the braids pulled away from center. I am not sure what I did wrong. Monicatfp