Challah recipes - effect of eggs.

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Patf on 23 Jun 2015 at 07:49

I've been bakiing challahs for a long time, and recently (since buying Maggie Glezer's book A Blessing of Bread) I've been experimenting with the ingredients.

I used to use a sort of brioche recipe, sometimes using wholemeal flour, but omitting milk and butter ( to make them pareve) and eggs. Now I'm using honey as per Maggie G., but I find the addition of eggs makes the challahs very dry. I still use veg. oil.

Does anyone else find adding eggs to the dough makes the challahs dry? Perhaps you like them dry?

will make it more cake like.  Don't think it'll dry it out. Challahs are egg breads and not really made with milk or butter. Think of a normal dough enriched with eggs and sweeter.

 

I'm not going to guess at why your loaves seem dry to you.  I do, however, suggest that you seek the pareve recipe for challah in The World of Jewish Cooking by Mark Gils.  It makes what I think of as "the perfect challah in everyone's mind".  Everyone who's accustomed to challah, that is.

 Here's the list of ingredients for his Eier Challah:

5 tsp dry yeast

2 cups water

1/2-3/4 cup honey (or sugar)

3-4 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

5 tsp kosher salt

8 cups APF (I used bread flour, not APF)

1 egg, beater, for the glaze

seeds, applied after the glaze, just pre-baking

 

 

and the recipe - I'll try that . Not sure about american cups - is 8 cups around a kilogram? 2lbs?

My experience of making bread goes back a long way, well before I started to make challahs. We had got used to rather moist dense sweetish bread, white and wholemeal, So we prefer that texture in challahs.

I know it's slightly different from those that other people make.

Your challah in your link looks just like those that I try to make, except I usually put sesame seeds on.

We're living in France at the moment so another problem I have is to obtain suitable bread flour. Whatever they say about french bread, their wheat/flour is nothing like UK or Canadian flour - it's very low in gluten.

I can get imported wholemeal flour though, and also use a french brioche flour which has additives including gluten.