Challah: Day Two

Day One can be found here.

When I got to the dough the next morning, it had become a monster, rising up and out of the container in an ever-expanding mass of gluten.  This should have been expected, as the dough's nine egg yolks and tablespoon of yeast suggested that the rise would be significant.  The accompanying photo was taken after the plastic wrap was removed from the mass; it was actually several inches taller, but the act of peeling off the Saran wrap started to deflate the dough.  Now it was time to shape.

This is where the scale comes in.  This dough was enough for two large loaves, so that had to be divided in half.  And as I'd planned to braid the loaves into traditional shapes, each braid had to be the exact same length and weight.  The first loaf was going to be a three-braid job, and the second was going to be a five-braid job.  After dividing and weighing and dividing again, the challenge was rolling out the dough into the same-length braids.  The best way to do it was in stages: roll them into basic cigar shapes, one at a time, and let them rest a few minutes so the gluten would relax.  Then roll them out some more, relax, roll more, relax.  Eventually, I had three long ropes of dough, which I wove into a braid with the help of my wife, whose experience in hair braiding was invaluable. 

The trick with braiding dough is that you want very tight braids, making as close to a 90 degree angle as you can.  For a three-braid loaf, you start in the middle and do one end, seal the tips, and then do the other end.  As you can see here, the central braid ended up being a bit large, which is fine.  We of course want to do the best job possible, but for a first-time braider and challah-baker, I think it's actually pretty good.  I placed it on a Silpat, brushed an egg white and water mixture on the surface, and set it aside for its two hour rise.

The five-braid loaf was a bit trickier, and I actually messed it up the first time so badly that I had to wad it all up and start it over again.  The problem was that I'd made the initial braids too large, and with the general tackiness of the dough, it was impossible to get it unwoven.

All five ropes

After the first weave

All braided together

There's a certain lean to the left with this loaf, but it's not the end of the world.  There's also a little "thumb" at the end, or as I described it, a "got your nose" tip.  Future iterations will not include either feature.  After an hour of rising for each, I applied another egg wash and sprinkled on some sesame seeds.  Then came more rising, and each loaf expanded to prodigious size.  The five-braid load went into the fridge so that it wouldn't over-proof while the three-braid job was placed into the oven.  Here are the results of all the baking:

The three-braid loaf

Cross-section of the three-braid loaf

The five-braid loaf

Note the rich, dark color of the crust.  The crumb inside is very tender and flavorful, as well as extremely rich.  There's enough bread in both loaves to feed the National Guard. 

Future challahs will be done a little differently.  First, I'll cut the recipe in half; while this bread will keep for quite some time, there's too much of it for me and my wife to eat.  Second, the loaves will be a bit smaller.  Third, I plan to practice my bread-braiding skills some more so as to minimize bulges, doglegs to the left, and thumb-tips at the end.  But overall, I'm really pleased with the results.  It's a very good bread, and I feel a certain sense of not only accomplishment in making it, but renewed connection to my Jewish faith and culture.

Challah: Day One

It's been several years since I've had challah, which is an egg-rich bread typically served on the Jewish sabbath, and my East Coast sensibilities typically prohibit me from purchasing a ready-made challah from a bakery, so I decided I'd give it a try at home.

Mise en place

The biggest challenges were the number of egg yolks (I used nine to achieve the desired weight) and the amount of flour (34 ounces, or a little over two pounds).  My stand mixer was not going to be able to handle this, at least with the dough hook attachment.  In my earlier post, I mentioned how a recipe of over five cups of flour would cause some difficulty, so obviously a recipe containing over seven cups of flour would be impossible for my size mixer.  This would be a bit of a gut-check.  I wasn't used to making bread without my trusty dough hook.  Was I up to the challenge?

It mixed a bit like a cake batter: all the liquid ingredients and sugar went in first, and then the flour.  The paddle attachment was up to just above its neck in ingredients, but pushed on through for the first two minutes of mixing.  I ended up with a coarse, shaggy dough that I let rest for five minutes..  The directions suggested stirring the dough for another four minutes after the first rest, so I got a heavy plastic spoon ready and got to work.

Stirring the dough was almost impossible.  There was a great deal of it, and while it was still fairly sticky and wet, it fought me at every turn.  I found after some wrestling that the easiest way to move the dough around the bowl was to move the bowl and the spoon almost like I was folding it.  It was a fairly good, if short workout.  Imagine what it might have done to the motor of a stand mixer.  A couple of minutes' worth of kneading came after, which was rather easier, and I formed it into a ball which I subsequently put into an oiled bowl in the refrigerator to rise for at least a day. 

The big choice is: do I give it the traditional braid, or do I just plop it into loaf pans?  Go big or go home.

Fruit Filled Thumbprint Rolls

The earliest recipes I'll be following on this blog will be taken from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day, as my focus is on artisan breadmaking.  Some of the things that characterize artisan breads is a slow rising and fermentation process, higher hydration levels in the dough, and gentle shaping methods.  Anyone can make a standard loaf of bread with the texture of open-cell foam by following the directions on a bread machine.  That's easy.  But for that crusty, tasty bread with large, irregular-shaped holes throughout the loaf, a little more care and technique is needed.  I have to emphasize that the term here is a little more care and technique.  I'm not an expert; I'm feeling my way along and going step by step as the recipe describes.  But after some repetition I've already had great success.  If I can do it, you can do it.

Day One: Mixing and Rising

I won't provide the full list of ingredients here; interested readers should purchase Mr. Reinhart's book to get the details.  Because my scale only goes to one decimal point for weights, I measured the flour, using King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose flour (I like the King Arthur flours for both the quality of the product and the name, which is cool), sugar, and salt by weight.

The recipe also called for 17 ounces of lukewarm whole or low-fat milk, which I also weighed out and microwaved on high for 1:40 to get it to that warm-but-not-hot temperature.  The milk I used was what we had on hand: skim milk.  I hoped to offset the fat-free quality of the milk by using melted butter rather than the preferred vegetable oil; time will have to tell when it comes to tasting.  After measuring the yeast with teaspoons and whisking it into the milk to dissolve it, I added the mixture, plus the melted butter, into the flour and mixed it with the paddle attachment at the slowest speed for a minute.

This is what it looked like after a minute's mixing: a soft, coarse ball (which is exactly what it's supposed to do).  There's typically a gut check when the mixer has gone for a half-minute and the ingredients don't seem to come together as promised, and you may want to quickly add what it appears to need: flour or water.  Don't.  Just wait.  Let the mixer do its job.  It'll get there, especially if you followed directions. 

The recipe suggested switching to the dough hook and mixing for a few more minutes to create "a smooth, soft, slightly sticky ball of dough".  One thing that usually happens with my Kitchenaid model when using the dough hook on a recipe that has more than five cups of flour is that the mixture tends to climb up the hook onto the top.  Sometimes it fixes itself, but usually not: just stop the machine, push the dough down with a rubber scraper, and get back to mixing.  The important thing is that you don't just start it and leave it: if the dough gets into the mixing mechanism, it's a pain to clean and gets gray lubricant into the mixture, which you don't want to eat.

After the mixing, the dough did what it was supposed to do: it became soft, supple, and tacky but not sticky.  A sticky dough will, when touched, leave a bit of itself on your hand.  A tacky dough will stick and peel off.  I kneaded it on a floured work surface for a minute by hand, and formed it into a ball.  My concern at this point was that maybe it was a little too dry.  It was still tacky, but was it tacky enough?  What if the dough's over-floured?  This isn't like cooking spaghetti sauce, you know.  Things have to be exact.  Is it screwed up already?  What if it doesn't rise?  Anyway, you get the idea.

At this point, I sprayed my favorite rising bowl with Pam and put the heavy dough ball into it.  The bowl used to be the reservoir part of a vegetable steamer we no longer use, and has served me well for years as a place to put rising dough.  It's tall, non-reactive, and the handles are nice for toting it around as necessary.  After that, I covered it in plastic wrap and put it into the fridge to rise.  Total preparation time was about forty minutes or so, including taking photos and notes.  It got into the refrigerator at 1:30 PM, and would stay there overnight until I was ready to start baking.

As it turned out, I didn't have to worry about the dough not rising.  By 4:30, it was already touching the top of the plastic wrap.

Day Two: Shaping and Baking
I let the dough rise overnight, and it didn't press beyond touching the very top of the plastic wrap.  At 2:00 PM I took the dough out of the fridge and began the shaping process.

Each roll is supposed to be 1.5 ounces rolled into a tight ball and placed on a parchment paper-covered baking sheet about an inch and a half apart. One thing I discovered is that when it says "tight ball," it means "tight ball."  The initial rolls I formed weren't as tight, and when they proofed for the suggested two hours, they undid themselves and ended up looking more like alien creatures with flippers than rolls.

Rolls Before Proofing

Rolls After Proofing Two Hours

I preheated the oven to 375 for an hour before I intended to bake them.  They were going to have to go in three batches, as I could only fit twelve rolls onto a baking sheet at one time without crowding them.  As the directions stated, I moistened my thumb and pressed into the center of the roll almost to the bottom, then widened the hole to accommodate the filling.  I used three types of fillings: lemon curd, which I made according to the recipe in the book, cherry pie filling, and blueberry filling.  A teaspoon was enough to fill the holes, and into the oven they went for the first eight minutes.

This gave me enough time to made the white fondant drizzle that would go over the top.  It was a standard recipe: confectioner's sugar, milk, vanilla.  The author suggested also adding corn syrup, so I added that, also.  I've made this white fondant drizzle before for many other recipes, but I made the error of going only on the author's recipe rather than my personal judgment.  While the drizzle was good, it was looser than I typically like; I prefer it to harden solid as it dries, and this version became almost like a glaze.  That's fine; I added more sugar to the mix to stiffen it a bit.

After eight minutes, when I opened the oven to turn the baking sheet around and ensure even heat was getting to the rolls, I was greeted with an unpleasant surprise: the depressions in the rolls had almost completely puffed up and out, and the filling had become a topping.  What had I done wrong?  Was it the skim milk?  The butter instead of oil?  Too much yeast in the dough for my altitude?  Unfortunately, I won't know this time around.

After another nine minutes, I took them out of the oven, glazed the sides with a pastry brush dipped into the fondant while they were still hot, and waited for them to cool before drizzling the fondant on top.

My initial disappointment with their appearance was significantly ameliorated by the taste of a finished roll.  The dough was tender and sweet but not too sweet, and the icing and fruit filling/topping was delicious.  Overall, I really quite like them.  When baking at home, you always want to have things turn out just like the picture.  This time, they didn't.  But the end product turned out well in taste and quality.

I'll have to make the recipe again some time, but will put in less yeast.  Again, I'm not sure why they over-rose in the oven, but the experimentation will be fun.

Tools

No discussion of baking would be complete without a brief mention of the tools you'll need to get started.  Further posts will get right into actually making things, but for now, let's talk a little bit about the tools of the trade.  You don't need to spend a great deal of money to get started, and just about everything you need is available at your local supermarket or Wal-Mart. 

Dry Measuring Cups

Dry Measuring Cups: Need to Have
There are two types of measuring cups: the kind for measuring dry ingredients, and the kind for measuring liquids.  The actual measures aren't any different from wet to dry; that is, one cup is one cup.  Nonetheless, a set of measuring cups that you can level off with the back of a knife is vital.  Metal or plastic, it doesn't matter.  This will probably run you about $5.00.

Liquid Measuring Cups and Spoons

Liquid Measuring Cups and Spoons: Need to Have
Liquid measuring cups obviously help you measure liquids properly.  You'll want to have at least two liquid measuring cups, each one capable of measuring at least two cups.  The material doesn't matter as long as you can clearly read the lines and can put them into the microwave.  A two-cup liquid measuring cup is about $6.00.  For measuring spoons, make sure you have at least one tablespoon, one teaspoon, and one half-teaspoon.  Don't use your table flatware to measure ingredients.  Spend the $5.00 or so on a set of measuring spoons and you're good to go.

Workspace

A Workspace: Need to Have
You need to have a clean workspace upon which to knead, mix, measure, blend, etc.  I use a kitchen island on wheels that I can move about as necessary.  This workspace should be easily cleaned and as free of clutter as you can make it: flour gets everywhere, no matter how careful you are.  If you don't have a dedicated workspace, develop a system for clearing a space on the counter so that you don't have to worry about dirtying up the cell phone charger every time you make pizza dough.

Pizza Stone

A Pizza Stone: Need to Have
A pizza stone holds in the heat of a preheated oven, helping to regulate the temperature somewhat: it's essentially a flat, hot rock.  Baking bread on it ensures a higher-quality product.  If you want a pizza crust that has a crunchy outside and chewy interior, you'll want to have a nice, hot pizza stone in the oven.  Put it on the middle or upper rack.  For the lower rack, you'll sometimes want a sheet pan with a lip so you can create steam.

Nice to Haves
It's expensive, but a stand mixer is extremely nice to have.  You can spend at least $249.99 on a standard Kitchenaid job, which is what I have.  The paddle mixes things well, and the dough hook makes kneading a thing you wait to have done, instead of doing yourself. 

At least one Silpat silicone mat.  Expect to spend $19.99 on it, but it's worth it if you don't want to keep spending money on parchment paper.

Kitchen Scale

A kitchen scale.  Measuring flour can be tricky if you want to get the right amount, as it compresses very easily when scooped or poured into a cup.  And consider the difference in volume between coarse kosher salt and fine table salt.  Hence, if you're looking for truly exact measurements for your ingredients, you'll want to measure by weight, not volume.  A kitchen scale that allows you to tare (remove the weight of the vessel before the ingredient is poured into it) is a great thing to have, in that case.  Don't spend more than $25.00 on it.


My kitchen tools are well-used, but work just fine.  You don't need a $22.00 rubber-handled measuring cup to make good, crusty bread. 

Introduction

Hi!  My name is Dave, and I'm an amateur baker. 

This blog is intended to document my experiences in baking at home; much of it will feature breads and other products made from yeast-leavened dough, though the occasional cake, cookie, and like item will be featured.  Why I'm doing this is to show you, the amateur or wannabe baker, that while there's a certain amount of science and specificity to baking, it's nonetheless extremely easy to do with a minimum of tools and equipment.

Home-baked items just taste better than anything you can purchase from a store, and part of that is the satisfaction that comes with having prepared your food with your own two hands.  Some of the baked goods described here will include a few pre-made products, but for the most part, the intent is to always start from scratch.  With the proper ingredients, a good recipe, and some attention to detail, there's almost nothing you can't make yourself.  When you know what goes into your food, you appreciate it more.  That's part of what it means to eat healthy.

One thing I need to stress is that I'm an amateur baker.  I bake because I like it, both the act and the final product.  I've been baking for about nine years or so, starting with a bread machine and progressing to the use of a stand mixer and pizza stone.  I also live in a high-altitude area (the Rocky Mountains), so my results may be a bit different from yours if you live at sea level.  In general, though, I suspect that the mistakes I make, as well as the successes I experience, will not be significantly different from yours.

I'm always interested in hearing from you, so feel free to comment if you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts.  Thanks for reading.