Tag Archives: holiday baking

Recipe Review: Classic Challah — King Arthur Flour January #bakealong

Posted on January 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Classic Challah bread. This is a three-braid loaf. The golden brown color can be attributed to including honey as an ingredient and the egg wash applied before baking.

“I could live on challah bread, the Jewish kosher bread, quite happily.” Dan Aykroyd

Classic Challah

I first was introduced to Challah (pronounced Hah’-lah) bread when I moved to Columbia, Missouri in early 2001. Uprise Bakery, then located in a basement underneath a shoe store, on certain days baked, if I recall correctly, Challah bread. The Challah bread from Uprise Bakery was an egg bread that dried out quickly. I could not eat a loaf on my own before it dried out and was only fit for the foxes living down on Hinkson Creek to gnaw on.

Two Challah loaves on the Jewish Shabbat table commemorate manna falling from heaven when the Israelites wandered the desert after the Exodus. The manna fell a double portion the day before Sabbath or a holiday. Depending on the source describing the Jewish tradition, Challah is used and treated differently in religious rituals. A small portion of the dough, or baked bread, is set aside as a representative Temple offering. Challah can refer the act of separating the offering before the dough is braided. Ingredients can also be determined by religious tenets. The Shabbat and Jewish holiday meals start with two whole loaves, or twelve loaves, of kosher bread. By braiding six strands, the two loaves could represent twelve loaves. I would recommend you research Challah bread and discover its role in Jewish rituals for yourself.

King Arthur Flour Classic Challah bread recipe came together with ease. I had all the ingredients in the pantry. I weighed the dry and wet ingredients in grams. I used canola oil as the vegetable oil. While everything worked well this time, next time I make this recipe I will bring the eggs to room temperature before adding and mixing. Mixing 115 F (46 C) water and cold eggs made me nervous. One package of instant yeast did not quite fill a tablespoon, but I used only the one package. I combined the ingredients in the order listed. Using a stand mixer, the dough mixed and then kneaded with a dough hook for eight minutes. I then consulted the family baker, my father, who agreed with me the dough was much to wet. I was expecting a wet dough because of the eggs. Some sweet bread dough is a wet dough, but this was beyond expectation.

I weighed the dry and wet ingredients in grams.

There is something called the Baker’s Ratio or Baker’s Percentage. All good bread recipes follow this “magic” or “golden” ratio: 5 parts flour: 3 parts liquid. It does not matter if the bread is dinner rolls made with real, melted European butter or pizza dough made with cheap olive oil, both follow this ratio. Same flour, salt, and yeast, different tasting oils. The Baker’s Percentage is a ratio that determines how much of any ingredient needs to be present in proportion to the weight of flour. Egg or sweet breads tend to be on the wet side, violating the Baker’s Percentage because the eggs provide more liquid. For this recipe I did not weigh the eggs. I did not think to weigh the eggs. Next time I use eggs I will weigh the eggs. This Challah recipe also calls for 85 g honey. Honey is also a liquid, so you need to account for that weight in the 3 parts liquid. I calculated with the called-for 482 g flour, you would be permitted 337 g liquid. This Challah recipe’s 113 g water + 74 g vegetable oil + 85 g equals 272 g total liquid. This allows an additional 65 g for two liquid eggs. Two local farm-raised winter eggs should weigh, without shell, about 95 g. This would produce a wet dough.

challah dough after 8 minutes of kneading

I mixed the ingredients in the amounts called for by the recipe. After 8 minutes of kneading by the stand mixer I stopped to assess the situation. The dough is too wet.

A tablespoon of flour, each weighing 10 grams, was added at a time to the mixing dough for a total of 4 tablespoons, or 40 grams, before the dough looked and felt right. Under the Baker’s Percentage, the flour addition brought the weight of flour to 522 g and the estimated liquid weight to 365 g. The stand mixer kneaded for an additional 4 minutes.

After the addition of 40 g flour and four minutes of additional kneading, the dough was fine.

The dough was allowed to raise in a greased bowl on top of the refrigerator for 2 1/2 hours.

Challah dough and English muffin dough at the end of their first raise.

Challah dough (on your right) at end of the first raise on top of the refrigerator. Next to Challah dough is English muffin dough.

Working on a greased kneading mat, I weighed out three balls of dough, each weighing 306 grams. I used no flour when I worked the dough. I watched the King Arthur Four braiding demonstration video while the dough balls rested. Each ball was hand-rolled into a shorter than 20-in (51-cm) rope which shrank back every time I lifted my hands. The ropes rested on the greased kneading mat covered with greased wax paper for 10 minutes. The ropes did not shrink after resting, and stayed 20 in (51 cm) long. The three-braid loaf seemed most appropriate for a simple evening soup dinner. The loaf braided easy. I placed the loaf on a parchment paper covered silicon baking mat covering a heavy baking pan.

Braiding a three-braid Challah loaf. I used a greased surface and did not add any more flour when working with the dough.

The three-braid Challah loaf on a heavy baking sheet with a silicon baking mat and parchment paper before raising.

After raising for 2 1/2 hours, the three-braid Challah loaf is ready for an egg-water wash before being placed in a 375 F (190.5 C) oven.

I covered the loaf with a greased wax paper. The braided loaf raised for 2 1/2 hours on top of the refrigerator. I brushed the egg-water glaze over the entire loaf. I set the heavy baking sheet onto a larger heavy baking sheet as directed by the recipe in order to prevent the loaf bottom from over browning or scorching. The loaf baked at 375 F (190.5 C) for 20 minutes. I rotated the loaf at 20 minutes for even baking in the oven.

The three-braid Challah loaf has baked for 20 minutes.

I placed a piece of tented aluminum foil over the loaf. The loaf was baked in the oven for another 13 minutes.

Classic Challah bread. This is a three-braid loaf. The golden brown color can be attributed to including honey as an ingredient and the egg wash applied before baking.

At the end of the 13 minutes the internal temperature of the bread was 200 F. The 13 minutes may have been to long to continue baking. Because of all the heat escaping when I turned the baking sheet, I was concerned with not allowing the bread enough time undisturbed in a hot oven. The aluminum foil slowed the browning, but did not completely stop browning. You will want to watch and monitor the bread towards the end of baking time so that it does not scorch.

The bottom of the Challah loaf.

This bread went very well with the Cajun-spiced soup. You can get 16 servings from the bread. I took 1/3 of the loaf, sliced, to work on Monday. The Challah loaf was enjoyed by all. The texture, color, and taste was an enjoyable change from the whole wheat or sourdough breads my family usually makes. I am glad I now have Challah bread within my repertoire.

There are different ways to approach the ritual meaning or what Challah bread represents inside Jewish culture. I suggest you read and contemplate for yourself.

Wikipedia is a good introduction to Challah bread and its use in religious life. Challah

Another source of Challah bread information. https://headcoverings-by-devorah.com/Challah.html

Here is another source of information: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/challah/

I would be remiss if I did not include the Uprise Bakery website. They moved to a building they share with Ragtag Cinema and 9th Street Video on Hitt Street next to the Presbyterian Church. http://www.uprisebakery.com/

A website that explains the Baker’s Percentage is here: https://bread-magazine.com/master-formula/

Recipe Review: Cinnamon Star Bread — King Arthur Flour Holiday #bakealong

Posted on January 11, 2018 | 1 comment

Cinnamon Star Bread is the King Arthur Flour Holiday #bakealong recipe

“Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven is a friend for life.” — Lemony Snicket, from When Did You See Her Last? (2013) (All The Wrong Questions book 2)

Cinnamon Star Bread

If you have not read Lemony Snicket’s All the Wrong Questions series, you have missed a fun experience. This is not a book to read in public unless you want to be scowled at by serious, stuffy adults who dislike bursts of laughter. If you have read the much darker toned Edward Carey’s The Iremonger Trilogy, you will enjoy the much lighter toned All the Wrong Questions books. These are “You must read this!” books. Both take a 17-degree tilt on reality, and move forward from there. Like all excellent books cataloged as junior fiction, the books entertain middle school readers as well as adults.

While the Cinnamon Star Bread is not a cinnamon roll, pulling off a piece of Cinnamon Star Bread is better than any plain cinnamon roll. Each braid is a right size special event serving. The bread presents very well. What you bake looks exactly like the picture on the King Arthur Flour website. It appears you spent hours crafting the bread when you have not. If you have at most ten people over for a holiday breakfast or brunch, there won’t be any leftovers.

I have made this bread twice. Once in mid-November 2017 before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday as a test to see if how the bread would work as a holiday meal dessert, and, again in December for Christmas Morning’s family gathering. Both times were a success.

The bread ingredients added as listed on the ingredients list.

For the November baking I used the by-volume ingredient list. I combined all the ingredients into a stand mixer in the order listed. By accident I grabbed from the pantry the King Arthur bread flour. I used Bob’s Red Mill potato flour. I used Parkey® margarine instead of unsalted butter. I used vanilla extract. The water was heated to 115 F (46.1 C) as listed on the instant yeast package. The nonfat dry milk made the dough reek of rotten milk. That is part of using dry milk, I have decided. I then used the stand mixer to knead the dough for 8 minutes. After raising for an hour the dough had doubled in size. I divided the raised dough into four balls and let rest covered in the oiled mixing bowl I used for the first raise for 15 minutes.

The four layers are ready to slice into sixteen strips. The biscuit cutter in the center preserves the space in the center. I cut out from the biscuit cutter to the edge.

The kneading mat has circle sizes printed on it so I was able to roll each disc out to the 10-inch (25-cm) circle. I moved the rolled disc onto a pizza tin older than I am. I brushed the egg glaze onto the disc, then sprinkled with 2 plus some tablespoons sugar-cinnamon mixture. I used Frontier ® Coop Ceylon Cinnamon and regular granulated sugar. This process was repeated with the next two discs with all remaining cinnamon sugar mixture sprinkled onto the third disc. The forth disc was placed onto the stack of discs. A 3-inch biscuit cutter was placed in the center of the stack. With a pizza cutter, I nicked the edge of the stack to eye-ball measure out 16 strips. Once I was satisfied with an even sized 16 strips, I gently cut the stack from the center out with the pizza cutter from the edge of the biscuit cutter to the edge of the stack.

Cut strips ready for braiding.

This is the December bread. The strips were braided into eight braids. To braid, take two strips and twist thumbs out – wrists up twice, and pinch the ends together. I tucked the ends under.

This is the November Bread ready to be placed on a baking sheet and raise.

Taking two strips I twisted the strips out (thumbs out, wrist up) twice. I pinched together and tucked under the ends of the two strips. I did this all the way around so there were eight braids. After removing the biscuit cutter, I slid the braided star from the pizza tin onto the parchment paper on a large cookie sheet. The star raised for about an hour.

After applying an egg wash, the bread baked for 15 minutes in a 400 F (204.4 C) oven. The result was beautiful. We had the still warm bread for Sunday evening supper dessert. No knife needed. You simply pull a braid from the center and you are served.

November Cinnamon Star Bread

On Christmas Eve 2017 I baked the Cinnamon Star Bread, again. After a conversation with my father, who is the baker in the family, I printed the ingredients listed by the gram from the King Arthur website. I weighed the dry ingredients and Parkey® margarine to the gram as listed on the ingredients list. This time I used the King Arthur all-purpose flour. Everything else was the same as the November baking. The lukewarm water (115 F or 46.1 C as listed on the instant yeast package) was still measured by volume. I do not know if it was because grams is more precise than measuring dry ingredients by volume, but the dough was a better quality dough after raising for 1 hour. The dough felt softer, and worked better on the kneading mat.

When it came time to layer the discs, I placed parchment paper onto the pizza tin to assist sliding the star bread onto the baking sheet . This arrangement worked wonderfully. After a one-hour raise and application of the egg wash before going into the oven, the star bread baked in 15 minutes.

December Cinnamon Star Bread

A note of caution needs to be made when slicing the 16 strips. On one of the strips of the December star I sliced to far into the top disc and, I thought, it did not look right. I was not pleased with the look of the finished product. It was not as pretty as the November star bread. If you want a uniform center, be careful how you slice into the center for the braid strips.

Cinnamon Star Bread will be wonderful for potluck dinners. This bread should also do well at bake sales and silent auctions. If you want to impress the in-laws, this braided bread to do that. If you follow the instructions exactly, and apply the egg wash, the braided bread will look like the King Arthur Flour picture. The bread is best served with good quality coffee. A dark breakfast tea would also go well with this.

The #bakealong recipe can be located at https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2017/11/01/cinnamon-star-bread-bakealong/

Lemony Snicket’s All the Wrong Questions series website is here: http://www.lemonysnicketlibrary.com/

Here is National Public Radio’s review of Heap House. You must read this book! As the reviewer Amal El-Mohtar points out, you do not want to read this book in a place where you are expected to be quiet. https://www.npr.org/2014/10/17/356989525/heap-house-is-a-treasure-of-a-trash-tale

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Recipe Review of Dried Apricot-Pecan Bread, in The Best Quick Breads (2000) by Beth Henspergen

Posted on December 31, 2014 | Leave a comment

Apricots are important icons to several cultures around the world. The stone fruit is as important as olives to other cultures. Like olives in some places in the Middle and Near East, intentionally destroying an apricot tree is such an extreme insult over which people that are willing to kill. The apricot we know today may have been developed in Armenia up to 8,000 years ago. Apricots have been identified as cultivated in India 5,000 years ago. Spanish Missionaries carried apricot seedlings west across North America as they carried the Gospel and sought golden salvation in the Mediterranean-climate of California. The pale orange fruit dries into a golden bronze coin when not treated with preservatives. Apricots were an important commodity in along the Persian and Silk Road trade routes. Today, Turkey is the largest producer of dried apricots.

Two loaves of Dried Apricot-Pecan Bread from The Best Quick Breads (2000) by Beth Hensperger

The recipe for Dried Apricot-Pecan Bread is one of my favorite quick bread recipes. I shared it at work several times a year. My English and Irish co-workers called it a wonderful tea bread. I considered this the best critique available. It is best served cool and sliced thin with a very sharp knife. Sweetened butter is best.

I need to first say I love this cookbook, but that does not mean the recipes do not need to be tweaked to bake the best bread. I have been using the cookbook for over ten years and each recipe has its own adjustments.

I recommend the Turkey apricots over the California apricots. I use kitchen scissors to cut the dried fruit into not quite match stick size, but maybe two match sticks wide pieces. When you hydrate the 12 oz chopped, dried apricots, you can use 8 oz water, or orange juice, or orange liqueur.

There is nothing special to the mixing of the dry ingredients. Use the best flour you can afford. It really does make a difference in the finished bread. The 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour which the recipe called for and I used in the photographed loaves here was ground by my father from wheat berries he purchased from King Arthur Flour at their office in Atchison, Kansas in a Vitamix food processor. My family takes flour quality very seriously.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar which is included in the first step when you marinate the apricots. I used a half cup of finely granulated sugar and in this batch I think that was to much. The surface of the bread was much to brown, in my opinion. That said, I had a nice center crack on one loaf, which indicated good expansion during baking. The recipe calls to allow the dough to rest 15 minutes before placing in the pre-heated oven. I allowed the dough to rest 20 minutes before baking.

It has been suggested if I want to avoid the quick bread from cracking on its top surface I need to allow the dough to rest before baking. I think this is important especially when dealing with quick bread recipes that rely on baking soda for expansion, such as this recipe. The 4 oz plus a little orange juice added at the end provides the acidity to trigger the baking soda and any expansion that occurs before and during baking.

When combining liquids, mix the two eggs with the 4 oz orange juice, then add to the rest of the ingredients. I do not recommend substituting orange liqueur. You need the orange juice acidity to interact with the baking soda.

My main complaint about the recipes in the cook book is that they consistently do not call for enough liquid to adequately combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. I have had the best results in hand mixing this recipe. It is very important to not over-mix but the dry ingredients do need to be evenly moistened. Add more liquid, here orange juice, a tablespoon at a time until the flour does not stick to the mixing bowl. The recipe calls for 60 minutes baking time, but this recipe is done, provides a clean toothpick when inserted into the top of each loaf, right at 50 minutes.

Dried Apricot-Pecan Bread is wonderful at a brunch, on a picnic served with paper-thin slices of honey ham and a small amount of marmalade, or as a mid-afternoon snack with cream cheese. This quick bread can be as sophisticated or as simple as you desire.

The recipe book I use is The Best Quick Breads: 150 Recipes for Muffins, Scones, Shortcakes, Gingerbreads, Cornbreads, Coffeecakes, and More published in 2000 by The Harvard Common Press. ISBN: 1-55832-171-3 It appears the book was republished in 2012.

http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-best-quick-breads/