Making Challah at home!

There's a particular bread that Theresa just loves. Now that she's had a few months experience with baking quite a few other things, she's going to attempt it. It's Challah!

I'm happy to have the stand mixer to take care of heavy lifting. With over 1400 reviews and a 5 star rating, the nytimes.com recipe for My Favorite Challah is what we'll be making. It's going to make 2 loaves. Whoa, 8 cups of flour! Well let's hope it's tasty.
The flour was being absorbed into the dough pretty well at the beginning, but once we got to the seventh and eighth cups, the flour started coming out over the sides. Theresa and I created a shield with our hands to keep everything inside the mixing bowl. If only I had a third arm to take pictures, that would have been a funny one.

The dough is rising nicely. We'll return in another 30 minutes.

Theresa is being ambitious and choosing to do a 6-braid challah. Being very precise, we're weighing out the dough and splitting it into 6 even balls.

Each ball is ready to be made into snakes.

That's my job. Two loaves worth of dough snakes.

Alright Theresa, do your thing.

Youtube is great for learning new skills. Theresa thought the video from Northwest Sourdough did a good job explaining it.

That's coming along very well Theresa.

Wow, that looks pretty! Theresa you did a great job!

I want to take a crack at that.

Looks pretty good!

Theresa basted both of them with an egg.

Then we let both of them sit on top of the stove to rise again. Forty-five minutes later they're ready to go into the oven.

Fifteen minutes in, I swapped the bottom one with the top one and rotated them 180 degrees. They're looking fantastic!

They're done!

Theresa said the Challah bread turned out even better than she could have hoped.

It smells great. And now lets cut into it.

Yum! That looks like a delicious loaf of bread! Chi was particularly impressed with this one, calling it the best bread we've made out of everything so far. This and the Chicken Dijon Garlic Sauce are her favorite things we've made so far.

Mmm. Topped with butter, this bread is really tasty. Great job today Theresa! This challah recipe is a winner!