#5: Transitional Challah

Challah was one of the first breads I learned to make, and I've made it many times. Frankly, a whole wheat version seems just a little strange to me. But then, challah is not part of my cultural heritage so perhaps this is just me.

At his presentation at the 2010 Asheville Bread Festival, Peter Reinhart remarked that the secret to good challah is the realization that egg whites tend to dry out the loaf. Replacing some or all of the whites with yokes gives a less dry loaf. This realization seems to have come to Reinhart gradually. In his 1999 book, Bread Upon the Waters, he uses four eggs. In both his 1998 Crust & Crumb and his 2001 Bread Baker's Apprentice, he uses two whole eggs and two yokes. By 2007, this transitional loaf calls for one egg and four yokes. In 2009, his Artisan Breads Every Day call for four-to-five yokes per loaf with no whites. This last recipe produced the best challah I've ever made by a wide margin. With this in mind, it might be interesting to make a similar adjustment to the transitional loaf. This is certainly something to keep in mind for our eventual return to Challah.

In making this bread, I used four strands of dough since this was the easiest way to do the division. (In the past I've played with other patterns including on attempt at a star. See the posts for my Hamelman Challenge for October 2010 if you are interested.) As it worked out, one strand was a bit too long so I had a little dough left over. I used this to add a bit of decoration to the loaf. (Gilding the lily perhaps?) Unfortunately, I ran this diagonally across one end of the loaf and as the loaf expanded, the decoration broke into two pieces.

Overall this is a good loaf but I prefer Reinhart's more recent recipe.