This beautiful Challah is from “Inside the Jewish Bakery“, page 26.  I have been baking along with the challenge on The Fresh Loaf  .  The goal is to bake every recipe in this book.   I haven’t had time to complete all the assignments,  but this one was very easy and tasted great!

I mixed the dough in my Bosch mixer and put it in a large bowl to proof.

The next step was to punch it down and divide it into as many pieces as needed for the braid you were doing.  I weighed the entire dough ball on my scale and then divided the full amount of dough by the number of pieces I needed, then weighed each piece.   I was making two four-strand loaves, so eight pieces were needed.  Then the eight pieces rest for 30 minutes to relax the gluten, before rolling each piece into a rope so that it can be braided.

The book has excellent photos showing how to braid the loaf.  It’s a bit harder than it looks to actually get the ropes even and braided evenly.

I lost track of time and my loaves proofed just a bit too long, but the taste and the texture were still great.  It’s such a beautiful light yellow color.  I took the loaves to work and left them in the staff lounge with a tub of whipped butter.  They were devoured in short order.