Easy Braided Bread - Challah

The Jewish New Year - Rosh Hashana - is nearing, and I thought I'd share one of may favorite holiday traditions growing up.
It has to do with the bread we eat, Challah, on the first night of the holiday. This braided bread is eaten every Friday night and Saturday afternoon throughout the year, but unlike every other week, on the High Holidays it is baked into a round loaf, symbolizing renewal.

 

Growing up, we used to sneak the Rosh Hashana (New Year)  greeting cards we made under the bread cover (they lay covered until after everyone is seated and the wine has been blessed). When my father would uncover them, he'd always be "surprised" to find all of our handmade cards.

We make Challah bread almost every week, and it's surprisingly easy, especially if you have a Kitchenaid. Our guests are always impressed, and because we make a couple loafs we also give them as gifts no neighbors and friends.

So today I want to show you a few simple way to make any gift (especially the edible kind) look amazing - with only a few things you probably have lying around at home. With these tricks even a store bought granola bar could look amazing, here's the how to.

 

Wrap a piece of parchment paper (I use simple baking sheets cut into strips ) and tie a brown string around it.

The combination of parchment paper + brown string gives a rustic vibe to anything, making perfect for home baked (or store bought, I won't tell) goods.

 

Or, you can cut tags out of patterned paper and tie them with a piece of ribbon to your loaf. To get the nice neat bow above, wrap the ribbon around the loaf, string both ends into the whole on your tags, then tie the bow.

You can also make rolls out of the Challah dough. Just roll out the dough into a snake about the length of your hand, and tie into a knot. You can then put the rolls into this chic bread basket, which is actually a linen napkin folded and pressed is an idea I first saw on Martha Stewart blog. I used linen napkins from my collection, pressing with an iron as I folded.

This is how it's done:

 

Fold both edges towards the center (you can leave a bit so they don't meet each other %100), then fold the open edges back, Voila.

And the recipe for this Challah? We use a revised version of this recipe, this is what it looks like after our revision: 

1 kilo flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp dry yeast

2 eggs

1/2 cup Canola oil

1.5 cups water - add more if necessary. 

1 tbsp. sea salt

Mix all of the dry ingredients except the salt. Add the oil, eggs and water and knead into dough. You may need to add water - just until the dough is formed. It's ok if the dough is a little sticky, just make sure it's manageable. Sprinkle the salt in and knead for about 5 minutes.

Cover the dough with a plastic bag (not the bowl, the actual dough) - this will keep it moist as it rises. Let it rise for about an hour. Divide the dough into 6  and spread them on a baking sheet.Let them rise again, covered, for another 15 minutes. Braid each 3 pieces into braids, beat and brush an egg over the loaves and sprinkle with sesame and sea salt. Bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees cell) until the loaves brown - about half an hour.

How about you, dear readers? Any special holiday traditions you love? Are they always about food, like they are for me?

Let me know in the comments,

Until next time - 

Elisheva

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Nostalgia, Beutiful Views, and Recipes

Maybe it's that wintery smell, or the rain that won't stop - something is making me nostalgic. With the holidays coming soon, I'm especially nostalgic for Holiday customs. And you know when I say customs - I mean food:)
So this post will bring you a family recipe with a shot of the view from my house, along with a recipe by my amazing and talented friend Tamar who just moved up North, and the views from her house.
In my house, lighting Hanukkah candles is always done with a burnt aroma lingering in the background. The smell is not from the candles, but from the Potatoe Latkes my Mother makes.

I've tasted many a Latke - and I always feel so bad for those poor souls still eating plump fluffy wet Latkes. If there is one thing I learned from my mother, it's that you can never really burn a potato. My Mothers Latkes are juicy on the inside, and crispy on the outside. Our favorite part of her Latkes are  those little crispy fringes surrounding them. Poor other peoples fringless Latkes, they do not know what they're missing.
For this recipe, you'll need about 8 large peeled potatoes, a medium-small sized onion. Grade them finely together in your food processor, then comes the most important part. Take a clean bowl, pick up a handful of potato-onion mush and squeeze out all of the water over the food processor. Then transfer the waterless mush into the clean bowl. Repeat for all of the mixture, so you're left with a bowl full of the dry-ish potato-onion. This part is what makes the Latkes crispy on the outside.
Add two heaped tablespoons of flour, two eggs, some salt and pepper. Mix it all up - I admit I use my hands. And it's squishy.
Heat some oil (Olive or Canola is fine) in a frying pan. It should not completely cover the Latke, but rather reach halfway. Take small handful off the mixture, squeeze it again to get rid of liquids and make it flat. You can pull out a couple of potato strings, for the crispy fringe part. Put the Latke in the oil, flip when one side is brown, the take it out as soon as the other side is brown - and transfer to a plate. (I put some paper towels under the Latkes for the oil to drip out)
You can now enjoy them!

 

Until next time,

Elisheva

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