April 26, 2020 - 3:28pm
Challah bread texture
Looking at these two different challah breads, you can see the bottom one seems to have a softer, more tear-able and layer-y texture while the other has a firmer structure. The processes don't look all too different from each other, so I'm wondering how you could get the texture of the bottom one because all I've made is stuff that looks like the top one, and I like the more tear-able, soft texture. Thanks!
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What are the recipes for the two photographs you posted? What is the recipe for your recipe?
The bottom photo shows more gluten development. It also could be more enrichment, meaning more butter and eggs for a constant flour weight.
Challah is essentially brioche. Brioche is an enriched dough.
Which brand and type of flour are you using? Try a good brand, fresh, all purpose unbleached white wheat flour, highly enriched with butter, eggs and sugar, and develop the gluten well.
For every 100g flour try 50g eggs, 60g butter, 12g sugar, 12g whole milk. Develop the gluten by aggressive kneading. See if that gets you where you want to be.
My Current Recipe (looks like the top):
2 ½ cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 tb. active dry yeast
1/2 cup honey
4 tb. vegetable oil
2 eggs + 1 eggs for brushing
1 tb. salt
8 cups unbleached AP flour
I'm using King Arthur Unbleached AP Flour. Just saw the bottom recipe had bread flour and that has a higher gluten than AP, so maybe that's part of it.
Glancing at the recipes, yours looks much less hydrated and possibly less enriched.
Can you convert both recipes to grams? It makes the comparison much easier.
If you want different results:
- increase hydration
- increase enrichment: oil, eggs, sugar, butter, milk
- increase gluten development: knead more aggressively, for a longer time
Oh yeah, looking at the bottom recipe, for the same amount of flour it has over 2x the quantity of eggs and oil compared to the top recipe. Fat is precisely what gives bread that wispy and flakey texture so more eggs (especially yolks) and oil will make the bread more tender. Also, have you considered adding a tangzhong to your recipe? If you don't know what it is, it's a Japanese bread-baking method popularized by the trendy Hokkaido milk bread where you make a cooked flour paste from some of the flour and liquid in the recipe. Take 5% of the recipe's flour (in weight) and add 5x its weight in water/milk (subtracting from the recipe's called amount of liquid) in a saucepan. Heat over medium, whisking constantly, until it turns into a kind of vaseline-like paste. Transfer it to a heatproof container, let cool completely, and add it into the recipe along with the wet ingredients. It makes the final bread softer and fluffier.
Hi! I just bought "Breaking Breads" by Uri Scheft and he perfectly describes the texture of a good challah and how to achieve it: "When you break into a loaf of challah, it should pull apart almost like cotton candy coming off the paper cone. There is a soft and tender threadlike quality to the crumb of a well-kneaded challah. It is layered with sheets of tender gluten, so it can be almost unraveled rather than broken apart like a loaf of sandwich bread. There are three ways to achieve this: 1. Underknead.... with most dough, you want to be able to stretch a small corner to a thin sheet without it tearing (this is called the windowpane test). With challah, you don't want the gluten to get that strong--so knead only as instructed. 2. Underproof. Slightly underproof the challah, meaning that when you press a finger into the rising dough, the depression that's left fills in about halfway... 3. Use high heat to seal in moisture... You don't want challah to have a hearty, thick, and crisp crust--you just want the crust to be substantial enough to lock in the moisture during baking but soft enough to easily rip by hand when eating."