The fourth recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Traditional Challah (pages 516-521). I had made Challah once before in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice group and remember the bread was good but my shaping left quite a bit to be desired so I was happy when Laurie suggested making it as it would give me a chance to try shaping it a bit better, and we could use the bread for French Toast on Ash Wednesday this week.
Ingredients: flour, yeast, water, honey, eggs, salt, corn oil, and cider vinegar,
The recipe does not require a lot of hands-on time, but the different times for rising required a lot of patience. It’s good for me to practice patience. The starter required a short time to mix up and an overnight rest in the refrigerator. The next morning it was gloriously bubbly and active. I was so excited that this would mean shorter rising times for the next steps. Wrong. The first rise took about 4.5 hours to double. The second rise took 3.5 hours and still was not doubled so I parked it in the refrigerator (she gives this as an option) and hoped that somehow overnight it would be ready to go by morning…after all, three days to make a bread??? Sure enough, by morning it was nicely doubled and I set about shaping the loaf and letting it rise for the last rise before the oven, which, as the recipe said, did take an hour. It baked 30 minutes total in the oven and I had one very pleasing loaf of Challah.
I followed her recipe ingredients and all the steps for making the bread, making only one change, and that was that I made a half recipe for a smaller loaf as there are just two of us here and a huge loaf of Challah wasn't needed. The smaller loaf was a very nice size, and it was so cute...I'm all about the cute in food, so I'm happy that I made that change. I did read that if you decrease the yeast by half (for a half recipe) that the rising times can be longer, so that could account for the longer rising times for my loaf than the ones she gave in the book.
Mark is always happy to see homemade bread sitting on the counter, and even happier with the lovely taste. The taste was superior to any Challah I’ve ever had before, so maybe my patience will need some more practicing and I can pull together more loaves in the future. I’m really looking forward to a piece of French Toast with it tomorrow night. 
If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment. You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish. I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We’d love to have you join us.