I managed to fuck up a lot of stuff yesterday – it was one of those days where it felt like everything I touched fell apart – but one thing I did NOT fuck up was a loaf of challah to test a new recipe substitution. It looks a bit burned but it’s not, that’s just an extra-dark finish because I used a milk wash instead of an egg wash and substituted molasses for half of the honey portion in the bread. The milk wash was an emergency substitution because I ran out of eggs, the molasses was just to see what would happen.
Anyway it’s delicious and the molasses gives it a lovely golden color, so I did one thing right yesterday at least!
[ID: Three photos of a loaf of fresh challah, a round braided loaf in this case; the first image is the whole loaf on a cooling rack over a cutting board. The second image shows the loaf resting on the cutting board with a slice cut off to show the inside crumb, which is much lighter than the external dark crust. The third image shows the slice sitting on a plate, spread with butter, half of it topped with a chunky strawberry jam.]
For those asking, the pattern for braiding this particular loaf (one of my favorite patterns, I often do it instead of the long braid because I think it bakes more evenly) is illustrated pretty well in this video tutorial. I wish I could find the print version I used because I hate video tutorials, but that one really is helpful. For those who don’t want to watch a seven minute video, and lord knows I don’t, I’ve put some screengrabs under the cut.
Keep reading
