Challah-lu-yah

I also tested out wolfangel's challah recipe:

Verdict? Yum!

Comments

[wolfangel]

Yours doesn't look flat! I've had the weirdest problem with that recently. They're huge, but about two inches high.

Is that a four-part braid? I'm impressed.

It makes phenomenal French toast, but I always seem to eat it all too fast to get there.

[Rana]

Yep, it's a four-strand braid. I learned to do them as a kid -- they make great friendship bracelets.

Maybe it's the flour? I used whole wheat, and it has lots of gluten in it.

Mmm... French toast!

[wolfangel]

Well, I'm going to try again tomorrow, as a thank you to my sister, and also because yum. I'll see if it gets higher.

I tried to make the 4-part braid. Not so hard with thread, but dough? I should try to do that to my hair, actually.

[Claire]

I bought a supermarket version yesterday. I suspect yours was better. Blooming refined bleached flour. Yeuch

[Rana]

The trick with the more-than-three-strand braid is to abandon any idea of trying to work from both sides. It just doesn't, well, work. What you do is start from one side (in this case, it was the left) and go over, under, over, under until you reach the end. Then take the next left-hand strand and do the exact same thing. Repeat until you run out of length. (If the strands are long enough, you will eventually come back around to the original first strand.)

I wish I could do that with my hair. I've tried a few times but my hair is never long enough, and it loves to escape from braids.

[wolfangel]

I just went for 3 strands. I'm waiting for the loaf to rise vertically (not horizontally again, which is what it seems to be doing).

My hair is really thick and curly and pretty coarse, so although bits of it will escape from a braid, if I braid my hair, I pretty much don't need to secure the end, because it will stay anyways. I still want to figure out how ot make a rope braid, too.

[Rana]

Well, one way is this: divide the hair into two (or more -- but two is easiest to start with) lengths. Secure one with a clip to keep it out of the way. Take the free one and twist it in one direction (let's say clockwise). When it is all twisted, let it curl up and clip it to your head to get it out of the way. Unclip the second strand. Twist it clockwise too. (Eventually, with practice, you can twist up two at once, holding each in one hand. Remember that they have to twist the same way; your hands will want to mirror each other and will tend therefore to twist in opposite directions.)

Now unclip the first one (don't let either unwind). Twist the two strands around each other _counter_clockwise (I think I've got that right). They should neatly coil around each other. Secure at the end with a clip or hair bandie.

(This is basically how one makes twine or a multi-ply yarn.)

[Michelle]

Gorgeous! (B noted kosher salt and I'm afraid I didn't know how to pronounce it although we both thought kala?)

Tangible results of an effort! Get a photo and take it work. Put it on the desktop of your pc or tape it to the wall or if you don't feel comfortable doing that, stick it in a file or a binder you look at everyday. Replace it daily if you want. (Hell, I do.)

[wolfangel]

Oh, I didn't notice your directions until just now. But it works! I now have a (very inexpert) rope braid. Next up: a French rope braid.

Ch in Hebrew or Yiddish words is prounounced like the ch in Bach -- the same *place* as a k, but the air rushes through it like an s. (For a linguist, I'm remarkably bad at explaining this.) If you're lazy, you just pronounce it like an h, though. I'm sort of variable on that pronunciation, but I tend towards the ch and not the h sound.

[Michelle]

My Correction: I went back and printed out the recipe (again) and see that it's sprinkled with sesame seeds, not kosher salt.