Aviv’s Challah Recipe

Aviv’s Challah Recipe

Back in 2021, I got obsessed with being able to make great challah. As such, I spent the next several months to a year iterating and iterating over challah recipes; all in order to arrive at my perfect challah recipe.

Forget other recipes, I have experimented around enough so far and think (completely unbiased thinking, might I add) that my recipe is the best one out there. You dont need a heavy and expensive stand mixer or any fancy bread flowers for my recipe. I keep things simple in my super secret recipe.

With that said, my recipe is a mix of the following two recipes:

• https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-challah-recipe
• https://imgur.com/a/4pC3UGe

Ingredients

• 4 to 4 ¼ cups of AP flour (480g — 510g)
• ¾ cup (160g, or about 10 grams less) of warm water (used to bloom the yeast)
• It’s always easier to add water than to deal with a sticker dough
• ¼ cup neutral oil (I use canola) (~60g)
• ¼ cup of white sugar (50g)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 egg yolks (from large eggs)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 packet of yeast

Instructions

Measuring Ingredients

1. Empty your packet of yeast into a bowl.
2. Add ⅔ of your sugar (total sugar = ¼ cup) into the bowl with the dry yeast.
3. Add your ¾ cup of warm water into the bowl of yeast and sugar.
4. Mix the yeast/sugar/water mixture to dissolve the yeast.
5. Weigh 480g of flour into a bowl.
6. In a separate bowl, weigh 30g of flour
7. This will be used when kneading the dough
8. Add the salt (12g) into the larger bowl of flour
9. Add the remaining sugar into the larger bowl of flour.
10. Mix all the dry ingredients so they are well dispersed
11. Separate two egg yolks.
12. In a bowl, crack two eggs and add the two egg yolks. Whisk the eggs and extra yolks together
13. Add ¼ cup of neutral oil to the egg mixture.
14. Assuming your yeast looks good/alive, mix the oil/egg mixture with the yeast mixture
15. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Using a wooden spoon, combine everything until a shaggy dough forms.

Kneading/Proofing

1. Once you have a shaggy dough formed, turn the bowl out onto your work surface.
2. Make sure you scrape the bowl to get all the flour/dough out!
3. Knead the dough until all the dry flour is incorporated into one large dough ball.
4. Keep kneading the dough until you can “kind of” pass the windowpane test
5. I say “kind of” because you can under-knead your dough, and get away with it, if you let your dough proof long enough and add in some strength building folds along the way.
6. When your dough is too sticky, add in some of the “side flour” that we set aside for kneading. Keep kneading until that flour is incorporated. Repeat if the dough is still too sticky.
7. Flour the heel of your palm when kneading
8. Use of a dough/bench scraper is useful for this step.
9. Once you are satisfied with the amount of kneading you have given your dough, usually takes 10–20 minutes, place your dough in a bowl that has been greased/oiled.
10. 10 minutes of kneading is the absolute minimum, when working by hand
11. Cover your dough ball with some greased plastic wrap, to keep it from drying out, and then a kitchen towel.
12. Depending on when you want to bake your challah you can either:
13. Let your dough proof for a couple of hours on the counter or in the oven with the oven light on
14. Proof overnight in the fridge
15. No matter how you proof your challah dough, DON’T RUSH THE proofing process.
16. Enriched doughs take longer to proof than non-enriched doughs, so be patient.
17. The trick is to make the dough — and then forget about it.

Braiding/Baking

1. Once your dough has finished its “bulk” rise/fermentation, you can divide your dough into as many pieces/divisions as you’d like.
2. Fact: 4 strand challahs look the best.
3. If you use the slightly more complicated braiding method. Which I believe is called the high braid method. See the below videos for a demo of those braiding techniques:
4. https://youtu.be/KsQdgxs-bC4?t=396
5. https://youtu.be/llhB1eNh580?t=64
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TOKt18P7z4
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5cuTpvp0U&t=109s
8. There is an “easy” 4 strand challah braid, but it creates a flatter challah.
9. Flatter looking challahs are not as pretty IMO
10. Once you have braided your loaf, it needs to finish its second rise/proof. This takes ~1 hour in a warm place
11. Leave challah covered with oiled plastic wrap during this time
12. If you want a darker crust on your challah, brush it with egg wash every 10–15 minutes and leave the challah uncovered, for the egg wash to dry.
13. After an hour of final proofing, preheat the oven to 350F.
14. Before putting your challah in the oven, apply a final layer of egg wash. Then, if desired, put whatever toppings you like on your challah
15. Can’t go wrong with sesame seeds or everything but the bagel seasoning.
16. Or literally anything else. Zaatar is good.
17. Bake challah for 30–35 minutes
18. Once challah is done baking, remove from the pan and place on a cooling rack.
19. Let challah cool completely before cutting.