Alright, well I've taken a few weeks off. Due to traveling and being sick, I couldn't muster up anything to try and bake something nice. But now that I'm back I wanted to work with something I LOVE.
BREAD
I could bake and eat bread all day if it would constitute a healthy diet. But unfortunately you've gotta add some other stuff with it. There's nothing better than baking bread and having the aroma consume your home. I love it! Then the whole getting your hands in and kneading the dough. It's a little therapeutic in a way. There's just something that bread does that any other baked good can't do for me.
Anyway, when I was in high school I worked at a bakery where I was able to make Challah (the C is silent by the way). It's a Jewish egg bread, and it's oh sooo delicious! It's good as a sandwich, french toast, regular toast, or just snacking on. YuM! What I think is fun about it is that you get to braid it and not just put it in a loaf pan. Lame I know. But still, it's fun :).
The recipe I choose came from The Bread Bible. This cookbook is really indepth stuff. I was honestly really excited. For this challah you start by making a sponge either early in the morning, or the night before. It consists of part of the yeast, flour, and water for the dough. Then after it rests for atleast an hour you add more flour and yeast and let it rest for another 4 hours. Then you start mixing the rest of the ingredients and knead the dough. So needless to say it's an all day process, but one I was looking forward to!
Well, from this experience I learned that I need to be more prepared. The recipe tells you to use only a certain kind of flour and oil, but I thought I could just use what I had and I'd see what happen. This recipe wasn't a complete flop for me, but at the same time it was. My challah did not turn out to be anything like challah is suppose to really be. From the picture you can tell it doesn't look like it's suppose to. It usually has a much darker coloring. That is my fault. Well, everything that went wrong was my fault. Like I said before I was not prepared like I thought I was. I ended up running out of eggs so I couldn't do the glaze which gives it the right color. I ran out of honey, so it didn't have the right sweetness to it. Then when I was braiding it, I compeltely forgot how I did my 4-braids so it didn't turn out too pretty by the time I figured it out. I thought that even if it didn't look exactly like I wanted it should still have the same taste, but nope. Obviously being a little short on honey does take away the sweetness, but the right texture wasn't there either. It was real heavy. It just wasn't great. But we live and learn right?!
I really want to do this recipe again, but do it exactly how it says to and with the exact ingredients it says. So for furture reference, if a recipe tells you to use King Aruthur unbleached All-Purpose Flour, use exactly that. It really does make a difference.
