The Best Challah Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What kind of flour is best for challah bread? ›

Myrna's original recipe calls for all-purpose flour, and you can substitute that here. But I find bread flour gives the challah a nice chew without making it tough, and also helps the braided loaf maintain its shape after baking.

You get your liquid, your sugar, and some added flavor. Oil: Vegetable oil, generally used in making challah, is fine—and produces neutral-tasting bread. I prefer olive oil and love the slightly herbal note it imparts to my bread. If using raisins: Make sure the raisins are plump and not desiccated, if using.

Challah needs to fully proof before baking. That means that it should respond to a light press of the fingertips by very slowly rebounding. It could also be that your dough is too dense, or that you're not shaping it well.

Amount of flour: The key to a soft loaf that isn't dense is to use as little flour as possible. I start with 930 grams of flour and add up to 70 more grams based on what the dough needs. The amount of liquid in the dough will vary from loaf to loaf because “large” eggs are similar but not uniform in volume.

The yeast should be added last, after all of the dry ingredients. A crucial mistake that is often made is not passing the flour through a sieve before using it. If you don't sift the flour, the result is bread that is too dense and heavy. Sifting is what gives challah its soft, airy texture.

Overrising the first rise, which is when the dough is still just a dough, can occur. Usually if it overrose just a bit, say, for an hour extra in a cold kitchen, it doesnt really matter. You simply punch it back down and go on to the shaping.

Challah dough typically gets an egg wash to make the crust shine, but take care not to let the wash drip down the sides, or you'll end up with scrambled eggs in your braids. You can up the shine factor by opening the oven vent after the bread begins to brown.

Knead on medium-low speed until you have a sticky dough that clings to the bottom of the bowl, 5 to 7 minutes. The dough may seem too wet but have faith—it's supposed to be. Dust your hands generously with flour, then scrape the sticky, elastic dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.

Once it looks like a smooth and elastic dough, STOP adding flour; too much flour will dry out the dough! Add a bit more OIL instead and your dough will be great!

I suggest kneading the dough Thursday evening, letting it rise overnight, then forming the loaves Friday morning. With this timing, you are ready to break the challah around 12/1PM on Friday. And then comes the hardest part: waiting until the sun sets to eat it.

What ingredient makes bread more fluffy? ›

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

I continued to knead my dough for just about 5 minutes to ensure I didn't over work the dough. Over kneading can make the dough feel tough, and the gluten structure will tear instead of stretching. If you're kneading by hand, really get your whole body into the process in order to work the gluten.

Allow the bread to rise in a draft-free 80°F to 90°F area away from a heat source. If the area is too warm, bread will rise too fast and begin cooking before the yeast has finished acting. This will impart a "yeasty" taste to the dough that will be transferred to the finished baked loaf.

Separate challah without a brocha when using flour weighing between 1.23kg and 1.67kg (between approximately 8 to 12 cups of unsifted flour or 9 and 15 cups of sifted flour). Separate challah with a brocha when using flour weighing more than 1.67kg (approximately 12cups of unsifted flour or 15 cups of sifted flour) .

Dry Milk Powder

If you want a lighter fluffier bread loaf just add 2 Tbsp of dry milk to the flour per loaf of your bread.

No. Self-raising flour is effectively plain (all-purpose) flour that comes pre-mixed with baking powder. Strong (bread) flour is flour that contains more gluten than plain (all-purpose) flour. This makes it particularly suitable for making bread, which depends on developing gluten chains within the dough.

You can use all-purpose flour as a 1:1 substitute for bread flour and vice-versa. For example, for 1 cup of bread flour, you can use 1 cup of all-purpose flour.

All-purpose flour is best used for: cookies, muffins, bread, pie crusts, pancakes, biscuits, pizza dough, and pasta.

Challah is almost always pareve (containing neither dairy nor meat—important in the laws of Kashrut), unlike brioche and other enriched European breads, which contain butter or milk as it is typically eaten with a meat meal.