Challah

Contains gluten

We go for the whole wheat rather than sweet challah.  This large loaf bread machine recipe makes one large challah, or two small ones, or four smaller ones …

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup warm water
• 2 cups white flour
• 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbsp sugar (use corn sugar for fructose free recipe)
• 2 tsp salt  
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs +  2 egg yolks (used separately)
• 2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast (or 1 ¼ tsp fast rise yeast)

Instructions:

1. Spray breadmaker with oil so dough doesn’t stick.
2. Add water and oil to breadmaker pan.
3. Add flours, sugar and salt.
4. Add 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk. (Note: if I don’t want to deal with the 2 extra egg whites, I use 1 white instead of 1 yolk for this part. Result is a little less rich, but good.)
5. Separate last egg and set aside white for your morning omelette. Place yolk in small container. Add 1 tsp water, cover and put in refrigerator for glazing later.
6. Make crater in top of flour and add yeast.
7. Turn breadmaker on to dough setting. In my machine this takes about 1 hour 20 minutes.
8. When cycle is complete, let rise a 2nd time just by leaving it in the warm breadmaker for about half an hour more. (Note: if I’m making 2 large challot, I let the 1st loaf take its 2nd rise in a greased covered bowl and start the 2nd loaf in the breadmaker now.)
9. Heat oven to 200 ºF.
10. Spray or lightly grease cookie sheet.
11. Punch down, roll out and braid the dough.
12. Turn off the oven. This is a crucial step!
13. Cover loosely with foil or waxed paper or a towel. Sometimes I spray the paper so it doesn’t stick to the dough.
14. Let rise until double, about half an hour or 40 minutes.
15. Remove loaf from oven and preheat oven to  375 ºF.
16. Glaze loaf carefully with the blended egg yolk and water.
17. Bake at  375 ºF for 28 minutes.