BBA SOS: Holla for your Challah!

Last weekend was the first weekend of the summer that I had to myself. It was the first weekend without social events on the calendar. Well, there were drinks on Friday night, but the rest of the weekend was free and clear. On Saturday Dudley & I went down to the Mall and did some exploring; we even found the Einstein Memorial, which may seem like a no-brainer to some of you, but I'd been haphazardly keeping an eye out for it, and I was thrilled when we finally spotted it. Then Sunday after the farmer's market, I had time to bake! It was my goal to use the day to play catch-up with some of my baking groups that I've sadly neglected this summer.

One of my mom's friends from high school lives in DC and I see him about quarterly. He's a confirmed bachelor, and I always bring him some "treats" whenever we get together. Well, last Thursday you might say I had my knickers in a twist because I didn't have time to make anything to bring him. Mind you, this is a personal obligation that I put on myself -- I doubt that he'd mind if I skipped the baked goods once or twice -- but seeing as Dudley and I go over to his house and drink his wine, it makes me feel better to bring him something to nosh on. It finally occurred to me that I could bring him the cashew butterscotch bars in my freezer and the rest of the brioche.

The fluffy interior of the challah.

This was actually a great moment and the inspiration for the Sunday baking bonanza. I'd actually cleaned my freezer out of any and all baked goods. My freezer was a clean slate, and it was just begging to be filled up again. Besides, who knows when I might need an impromptu baked good? It's nice to have backups. So, last Sunday I set out to make casatiello, challah, and ciabatta from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Actually, I wanted to get tackle cinnamon rolls and cinnamon walnut bread, but that's over ambitious no matter what. The BBA is arranged alphabetically, and I'm itching to get out of the C's!

The challah dough was fairly easy to work with. It requires multiple proofings, an attribute of bread dough that I remember from baking with my BaBa. We never made challah but I remember having to wait and punch, wait and punch, before we ever got to do anything fun with that dough! At one point I had to leave the house for a bit so I just stuck the dough in the refrigerator to retard. When I got back home, I took the dough out, let it come back to temperature, and it resumed rising as usual. You're supposed to concentrate on getting the bubbles out of the dough during the initial proofings and kneedings, but I still had bubbles when I was rolling out the strands for the braids. It's actually really fun to pop these bubbles -- they squeak and if you like playing with bubble wrap, this is the dough for you.

I now have two giant loaves of challah in my freezer, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them! They're actually crying out to be made into toast (in my opinion) but they may end up as bread pudding at some point. Dudley's parents are going to be in this neck of the woods visiting friends soon, and I'm definitely going to send one their way. It's such a pretty braided loaf -- I think it's a wonderful part of a food gift. I've lost track of the members of the BBA SOS group, but check out Nancy's blog, the Corner Loaf if you'd like to see the round up of recipes.