Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Dessert Challah

I love baking Challah; certainly it is my favorite Jewish recipe to prepare.  There's something both relaxing and spiritual about making Challah that always leave me in a good mood.  This recipe, like any Challah recipe, does not require a breadmaker - I always use my KitchenAid Artisan mixer to prepare fresh, light homebaked Challah, and it works like a charm.  Challah is one of my signature recipes - one of the feats in the kitchen that I am the most proud of.  My favorite part of Challah making is checking the Challah after the dough rises.  I love waiting for the dough to rise and braiding the bread.  I love the polished, professional and glossy look it has when it comes out the the oven.  And finally, I love the warm, fresh taste of a beautiful soft Challah straight out of the oven.  Few things are more gratifying! My all-time favorite meal consists of Challah, homemade caesar salad, Asian Sake marinated chilean sea bass with papaya salsa and my husband's green apple risotto.

I have already made regular plain Challah and cinnamon raisin Challah for this blog.  So I decided that the next direction to go with this egg-based bread would be to prepare a dessert Challah.  I decided that chocolate and cinnamon would be a natural combination for the perfect dessert bread.  There's certainly other possibilities - I have a pumpkin variation up my sleeve for a rainy day.


Sasha's Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Challah (makes one medium sized Challah)
2 1/4 cup King Arthur Bread Flour
2 small packets dry active yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon sugar
1/2 cup warm water
1/8 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
4 egg yolks plus 1 egg yolk for the glaze
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

This dessert recipe is very loosely adapted from Martha Stewart's recipe for plain Challah from her Baking Handbook.  Basically, I looked at that recipe, not for direction, but to make sure I got some of the basic proportions right.

  

To prepare this recipe, first activate the yeast by placing the dry active yeast in warm water and waiting about 10 minutes for the yeast to activate into a frothy, bubbly form.  Then, combine the water, flour, salt, sugar, canola oil, four egg yolks, cinnamon sugar and chocolate chips in your breadmaker or artisan mixer and combine into a dough.  You can add an additional couple of tablespoons of water if you need to (I did this time, no big deal).

Place the challah in a well oiled bowl covered with a damp cloth and allow it to rise in a warm place for an hour.  My trick is allowing the oven to heat to about 150 degrees and then turn it off before placing the bowl inside the slightly warm oven.  I found that this allows the dough to rise faster and more completely.  Braid the Challah and put on a baking sheet sprayed with PAM.  Cover with an oiled piece of plastic wrap and allow to rise for another hour.  At this point, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Before you bake the Challah, glaze with an egg yolk using a pastry brush.  This will give the Challah a nice, shiny egg washed color when baked.  Bake the bread for about 20-30 minutes and enjoy!  Mine was sweet, soft and delicious.

Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Dessert Challah

Margie’s Kitchen in Boston:Valentine’s Day Special: Brunch Entrée – Johnny’s Crunchy French Toast

Photos by Lena

This year, 2010, Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday. Starting with this blog, I will be suggesting a brunch menu. The main entrée is French toast. I am using a recipe published many years ago in the “old” Boston Globe Magazine. I don’t have a date but the authors, Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven, wrote a food review titled “Breakfast of Champions.” One of the featured items was French toast from Johnny’s Luncheonette in Newton Centre. Johnny’s still exists and the Crunchy French Toast is still on the menu. I’ve modified Johnny’s recipe by substituting for the challah (or you could use Sasha's Cinnamon Raisin Challah) the Pane di Signora Belurgi (lemon egg bread) from Mary Ann Esposito’s Ciao Italia (see my blog on lemons (lymons)):
½ cup almonds, ½ cup walnuts, 1 cup cornflakes, ½ cup bran flakes
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 eggs, ½ cup of milk
Pinch of salt
8 thick slices of challah or lemon egg bread
Butter

Set the oven to 375°. Place walnuts and almonds on baking sheet and cook for 5-10 minutes until nuts are brown. Cool nuts then using blender, set to chop, blend for just a 20 seconds. Place nuts and cinnamon in flat bowl big enough to hold bread. Crunch cereal and add to nuts. Beat eggs, milk and salt in another flat bowl. Dip one slice of bread into egg batter and then into nut/cereal mixture. Heat flat grill on medium/high temperature for 5 minutes. Add a little butter then bread. Cook 5 minutes on each side and place in oven-ready plate. Repeat for remaining slices of bread.
Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar.

Margie’s Kitchen in Boston:Valentine’s Day Special: Brunch Entrée – Johnny’s Crunchy French Toast

Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Raisin Shabbat Challah

In the Jewish tradition, Shabbat dinner marks the beginning of the Jewish Shabbat, or day of rest.  Shabbat is marked by two things in my family - lighting of candles, Challah and a family dinner.  I often make my Challah at other points during the weekend as well, but tonight we had a Shabbat dinner consisting of Veal Marsala (which will be the subject of a future post).  When we lit the candles, we did so using my home baked Challah. 

Usually, I simply prepare a regular Challah, according to Martha Stewart's recipe in her Baking Handbook.  I already wrote about how I prepare Challah in an earlier post when I first started this blog.   Tonight, I decided to rework the original recipe to make a Cinnamon Raison Challah for Shabbat, which is consistent with the sweetness that Jews have always associated with this weekly day of rest.

Here's what you need to prepare Sasha's Cinnamon Raisin Challah:

4 1/2 cups King Arthur Bread Flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup warm water
3 small packets dry active yeast
1/4 cup sugar
3 T honey
8 egg yolks, plus 1 egg yolk for glaze
1/4 cup of oil

First, preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  When the oven is heated, turn it off.  Heating the oven a bit and then turning it off will provide a warm place for the dough to rise.  I used to dismiss doing it this way, but the Challah rises faster and better if this advice is heeded. 

In a small bowl, mix the dry active yeast, cup of warm water and sugar.  Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes for the yeast to activate.  It should become foamy and frothy.  If it does not, then it did not activate and you must start again, or your dough will not rise.  Mix the flour, salt, cinnamon and raisins in a large mixing bowl.  Put these ingredients in the basin of an artisan mixer, and add the 8 egg yolks, carefully separating the yolks from the whites.  Add the honey, activated yeast/sugar mixture and oil.  Mix until it forms a dough in the mixer.

Place in a well-oiled bowl (grease with Pam or Canola Oil).  Then place the bowl, covered with a towel, in a warm place, as discussed above.  Allow to rise for about 1 hour, until it doubles in size.  Then divide into two balls.  Divide each ball into three strands, and pinch at one end.  Braid into a Challah.  Don't worry that the Challot each look small - they will be rising for an hour, at which point each Challah will be quite sizeable.  But if you don't trust me on this one, feel free to make one Challah - a ginormous Challah, indeed.

Put the two braided Challot on baking sheets, and cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for another hour in a warm place.  They will get significantly larger during this period, as they continue to rise.  Then glaze each with an egg wash, and bake in an oven preheated to 375 degrees F for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.  Monitor this step carefully - depending on the size of your Challah the baking time may vary a bit.

Sweet cinnamon raison Challah is the perfect way to close out the week, and prepare for a sweeter week ahead.  The end result here was my softest, lightest Challah to date - perhaps my best yet (although I say that every time).  We ate it while it was warm, fresh out of the oven, after lighting candles.  This is the way Challah is meant to be served.

Challah

Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Raisin Shabbat Challah

Sasha's Kitchen: Baking Challah . . . and Challah French Toast

About 6 months ago, I decided to try making Challah in my artisan stand mixer. I was pretty confident at the time that I could do this, as long as I carefully followed a recipe. I had never made bread before, but this was shortly after the rainbow cookie success, so I was up for a challenge.

I decided to use the recipe in a Kosher cookbook that my Dad and Kim had given to Brad and I as a housewarming gift. It seemed logical to use a kosher cookbook for this recipe, since it was Challah, after all. I had all the ingredients except for dry active yeast. I followed the recipe to the letter. When I used the dry active yeast, I followed instructions suggesting that I add a teaspoon of sugar to the yeast, activated in warm water, and then put it in a bowl in the oven on warm for 10 minutes. Although I didn't realize it at the time, the yeast did not activate and the dough did not rise. My husband, not realizing that something had gone terribly wrong, insisted that he would eat it anyhow if I braided and baked it. So I did. In the oven it went. When it came out, it was heavy as a boulder. The bread, according to Brad, who tasted it true to his word, was dense and heavy.

I decided to try again with a new recipe that same evening, frustrated. I had enough eggs, and bought some more dry active yeast, and began again using Martha Stewart's Challah recipe from her "Baking Handbook." I highly recommend this book as a baker's bible to anyone interested in teaching themselves how to bake, as long as they have an artisan stand mixer.

This time, I activated the yeast in warm water, with a teaspoon of sugar and let it sit on the counter top for 10 minutes. The yeasty water became frothy and foamy, a sign that it truly had activated. I added the yeasty-water with the rest of the ingredients (flour, egg yolks etc . . .) as specified to the mixer. The I let the dough rise in a covered bowl for one hour. Sure enough, this time it doubled in size. Then I braided the Challah and let it rise for another hour. Then I painted the Challah with a brush using a mixture of egg yolk and heavy cream (which gives it its beautiful glow when baked) and baked it in the oven as recipe required until it was golden brown. Beautiful. I should add that this Challah makes wonderful french toast that will completely wow your brunch guests.




I should add that I've made a couple other kinds of bread as well - pumpkin bread, brioche, and beer bread (see my earlier blog entry).

The brioche was another interesting story. This time I used a King Arthur recipe for chocolate cherry brioche, a dessert bread. King Arthur Flour is the best bread flour to use in any bread-making adventure. This particular recipe called for instant yeast. I followed the instructions, which were not clear about what to do with the yeast. My husband was not especially enthusiasic about the cherries in this recipe - Brad refuses to eat cherries because they remind him of an unpleasant scene from a movie called "The Witches of Eastwick." This is why I generally do not make cherry pie. But this time, the cherries were in. I figured the instant yeast did not need to be activated because that was the definition of the word instant, right? Well, this brioche did not rise. A few weeks later I made brioche again using a different recipe (no chocolate or cherries and using regular dry active yeast in water) and it worked perfectly. I still have not figured out how to use instant yeast. However, next time I have a recipe that calls for instant yeast, I plan on substituting dry active yeast in warm water. We'll see if that works.

I was thinking of making ice cream again - this time rocky road. However, I'm kind of tired and recovering from a cold right now - my husband is helping prepare our dinner tonight (southwestern chicken with a spinach-cilantro sauce). I'll get to it when I feel better. Nothing like ice cream to deal with life's normal frusterations, right?

Sasha's Kitchen: Baking Challah . . . and Challah French Toast