Chef Monsta: I cook, therefore I blog

This post was written by my best bud, Jessica. I have been harassing her for a while to share her voice on my blog and she finally ceded!

Gila (aka Chefmonsta) has been asking me to blog my challah recipe since I first made it, so here’s my foray into the world of guest-blogging. Why, you might ask, spend hours baking challah when you can buy two challahs for $10? I started my challah baking odyssey when I heard that it was one of ONLY three mitzvot (Jewish commandments) women are commanded to fulfill (lighting candles on Friday night and purity of the home are the other two). I got the recipe from my friend’s mother, who got it from her Rabbi’s wife, who got it from some lady, who got it from… it actually goes back to Moses on Sinai. I’m convinced good things happen when you make this challah. It takes hours, but it’s well worth it! This is by far the best challah I, you, or anyone has ever tried:

This recipe makes 5 big loaves or 10 small loaves. I usually make 2 big loaves and 6 small loaves and hand the little ones out. People have told me stories about physical fighting over my little chocolate chip challah goody bag I gave one friend, or another friend that finished an entire small chocolate chip loaf in one sitting! Definitely a crowd-pleaser.

Important Tip: The house has to be warm, and the pans too, just don’t do this in a cold house. Very important to keep all pans and ingredients and challah warm while it’s rising, at least 70 degrees. I’m usually shvitzing in an 80 degree kitchen.

Ingredients:
5-pound bag of King Arthur unbleached bread flour
1 and 3/4 cups sugar
2 heaping tbsp kosher salt

8 eggs (room temperature)
3/4 cup of canola oil

4 cups water, between 115 – 120 degrees
1 tbsp sugar
4 individual packages of Fleishman’s regular active yeast (or weigh 1 oz. of dry yeast)

2 cups of flour for your countertop
5 large or 10 small tin pans, 1 huge mixing bowl, 2 medium mixing bowls.

Big bowl: Put dry ingredients in a bowl that measures 18” across and 7” deep and whisk flour, sugar, and salt all together.

- In a separate small bowl: Mix eggs and oil.

- In a third bowl, mix water, sugar, and yeast together and let the mixture sit for 15 minutes until it bubbles.

- Make a well in the middle of flour and pour in eggs/oil mixture and then water/yeast mixture.

- Mix together with your hands. (Note: It’s going to look lumpy and not smooth at all… just combine and DO NOT try to kneed it.) To make sure all the flour is in the mixture, add up to a half cup of canola oil as needed to get the flour at the bottom mixed together fully. Put a tiny coat of oil on top to keep it from getting dry. Put Saran Wrap across the top of the bowl, and put a cloth on top. Let it rise for an hour, and it will double in size. Punch it down to get the air out. Recover it with Saran Wrap. Let it rise again for 1 hour. If something is cooking in your oven, let it rise on your stove top so the heat fluffs it up.

- Put some flour on your countertop and put all the fluffy dough onto your countertop (it will deflate a bit during this process, but that’s fine).

- Say the following blessing: Baruch Ata A-Do-Nay Elo-haynu Melech HaOlam Asher Kidishanu B’Mitzvotav V’Tziyvanu L’Hafrish Challah. (Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to separate Challah). Immediately after saying the blessing, pinch off a piece of dough, approximately the size of a golfball or one ounce, and say: harai zeh challah (this is challah). Then wrap the separated piece of dough in foil and set aside.

-Divide the big lump of dough into 5 equal parts. Take each piece, divide it into thirds and braid it.

- To make the best chocolate chip challah in the world, use 1/2 bag of pareve chocolate chips per challah. Before you braid the challah, flatten each third, and sprinkle them with chocolate chips. Then seal the dough on top so that each third of the braid is like a dough tube filled with chocolate chips. Braid as above. You can also make it cinnamon with sugar instead of chocolate chips.

- Use tin pans that are great big loaf pans, 12 inches or so. Put a foot long piece of parchment paper and lay in the braid.

- Tuck the edges of the braid in. When you tuck the edges in – do it very slightly – you want the loaf to be the same thickness all over, so it cooks evenly. It is not really tucking–it is more to make sure it is together.

-Cover them with a white towel and let it rise again for an hour.

- Take 2 eggs and a tablespoon of sugar, beat, and brush it on top of the challah (sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the chocolate chip one).

- Bake on 350 in the middle of the oven for 30 – 35 minutes. Throw the tinfoil with the blessed challah piece on the bottom and leave it in the oven until it burns.

- Juggle around the challahs halfway through baking if there are 3 crowded on one oven shelf. When you have three challahs in an oven, move their positions – middle one on end, etc. The heat of pans don’t matter – there is a big piece of parchment between the challah and the pan. To check that it’s done after about 25 minutes, roll it off the parchment paper to make sure the bottom and sides are slightly browned. Chocolate chip challahs takes a bit longer, maybe 35 minutes.

- Take challahs out of oven, immediately take them out of aluminum pan and put them on a rack to cool off. The pans are reusable.