Somebody did some very bad planning when it was decreed that canning season comes along in the height of summer, just when I really don’t want to start any large cooking projects.  It’s just been too hot to go in a kitchen with any degree of enthusiasm for a month, so that’s why last month’s column didn’t get written.  However, with the early cool fronts coming in, I’m beginning to think it might be okay to turn on the stove once more.

One thing I will do, even when it is hot, is bake bread because bread is an essential component of sandwiches and sandwiches mean you don’t have to cook and not cooking means you don’t have to turn on the stove and heat up the house.  Of course, being a Mensan, I can’t possibly do anything the normal way and go down to the supermarket and buy a loaf of builds-strong-bodies-twelve-ways.  I could go down to the closest boulangerie and buy a loaf of decent bread, but that gets expensive pretty quick.  Also, if I’m a mind to have whole wheat, or a Tuscan loaf, or something more exotic than that, I can go find the flour for it and make it.  I spent too many years eating Mrs. Baird’s and when I got to Austin and found bakeries that made all these exotic kinds of bread you can’t get in Comanche, Texas, I received a broadening of horizons real fast.  And shortly after that the idea came through:  You could do this yourself for cheaper.  So I make my own, naturally.

A lot of the bread-baking sections of cookbooks, and some cookbooks devoted to nothing but baking bread, will tell you there is a transcendental experience to be gained from baking, because of the rhythm of kneading dough or meditation on the mystery of the action of yeast, or something.  Well, I don’t see it.  All I ever get from kneading dough is messy hands and a backache.  Therefore I will tell you a SECRET:  it’s worth your while to find a good heavy Mixmaster, KitchenAid, or other heavy counter-model mixer and go buy a dough hook for it or, alternatively, use your food processor (should you have one) with the plastic dough blade.  And a WARNING:  make sure you can really get a dough hook for your mixer, and that it will handle shoving around a heavy batch of dough.  My old Model 7B Mixmaster (barely postwar, and acquired for $10 at a garage sale; but boy it still runs good after 40 years) is too old and Sunbeam just didn’t make a dough hook for it.  AAAaargh!

And since I said all that, I will now qualify what I just said, and tell you that kneading bread is a good way to work off aggression.  Instead of kicking the cat, go slap around a batch of dough.  It won’t mind; matter of fact, it’s likely to turn out better because you worked up the gluten more thoroughly so the yeast can inflate the bread more and it makes a lighter loaf.

There were a couple of years when any bread at our house was bread I made myself, but we quickly discovered:

BREAD YOU MAKE YOURSELF TASTES BETTER THAN WHAT YOU BUY AT THE STORE

so you eats lots more of it.  And the principal result of that is, you get fat.

Now this is a discouraging discovery, because baking bread makes the house smell wonderful, and when the loaves come out of the oven looking nice and brown and “smelling most sentimental,” it gives a great feeling of accomplishment.  There are two solutions, however:  1) you can go into the bakery business, except then baking quickly stops being fun and gets to be too much like work, or 2) give it away to your friends.  This has all kinds of other nice effects like your friends will think you’re a neat people if you show up with a present of freshly baked bread, and you get a reputation of being a versatile, competent person.

And that was why I baked challah (a Jewish egg bread) for my church Bazaar.  They wanted people who could do things or make things, and there I was, with a cross-stitch piece I started the year before for the Bazaar and (like every other craft project I ever saw) didn’t get through with in time, and a proclivity for bread baking.

Challah is not only a comestible, it is invested with a religious significance in the Jewish kitchen.  The mother of the family breaks off a small piece of the dough and burns it on the stove during the dough preparation; the entire preparation is called the “act of challah,” and is a symbolic reenactment of her origin at the Creation (see Genesis 2).  The loaf itself is braided, and when properly done, is almost worth varnishing as a permanent centerpiece (if it didn’t taste too good to leave alone).  I’ll be truthful:  the braiding nearly threw me, and would have if my wife hadn’t been around to show me how it’s done.  (Well, don’t look at me like that!  The longest my hair ever got was shoulder length, and it just wasn’t long enough to braid!  And don’t talk to me about Boy Scouts; I was never prepared to be one.)

Challah is made without any milk; the laws of kashrut have nasty things to say about “You shall not stew the kid in its mother’s milk” which means, among other things, that you can’t serve foods with milk in them and food with meat in them at the same meal.  (It also means don’t offer to treat your Conservative or Orthodox friends to cheeseburgers!)  Also, if you’re going to pay attention and do it up right, use oil or margarine instead of butter (same rule).

CHALLAH

In a large mixing or mixer bowl, combine the yeast, 2 cups flour, sugar, salt, and butter or margarine.  Gradually add the hot water and beat forcefully by hand, or at medium speed with the mixer flat beater, for 2 minutes.  Scrape the bowl every so often.

Add the saffron, eggs, and egg white (reserve the egg yolk and sugar mixture), making a thick batter.  Beat at high speed for two minutes with the wooden spoon or switch off to a dough hook on the mixer.  Continue to add flour while beating, until you have added about three cups more flour, and the mixture is not sticky any more.  If it is sticky, add more flour a little at a time until the dough begins to clean the sides of the bowl.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until it is smooth and elastic, or knead in the mixer under the dough hook.  Either way, knead about 10 minutes.  Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover tightly with a clean dish towel, and set in a dark warm (80° F.) place for about one hour, until the dough has doubled in size.  Punch the dough down and knead out the bubbles.  Divide the dough in half.

Now comes the fun part:  braiding the dough.  Divide each half of the dough into three equal pieces.  Under your palms, roll each piece into a 12” length, making sure they are equal in diameter.  If you don’t the loaf will be hard to braid and look ugly.  Lay out the rolls parallel to each other, about one inch apart.  Cross the left-hand roll (A) over the center roll (B).  Now cross the right-hand roll (C) over roll A, which has become your new center roll.  Next cross B over C, and then A over C, and so on until you get to the end.  Wrap the ouside sections under the center section at each end.

Place the loaves on an oiled or Teflon baking sheet.  Carefully brush the braids with the egg yolk mixture (glaze) and sprinkle liberally with poppy seeds.  Let the braided loaves rise, uncovered, until doubled again (about one hour).

About 20 minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 400° F.  Bake until the braids turn a shiny brown, about 30 to 40 minutes.  To test for doneness, insert a wooden toothpick into the center of a loaf.  If it comes out clean and dry, the bread is done.  Carefully remove the bread from the baking sheet and cool it on wire racks.  The loaves will be flimsy and unstable while hot, so USE A SPATULA underneath each loaf to transfer them.  Challah cannot be cut successfully while hot, so don’t even try.  If you want to eat it hot, tear off pieces of the loaf and do it that way.

first ran: November 1988

Return to the Cookery index page

Return to Sam’s Home Page

Background image provided by

Free counters powered by Ándale!