Recipe: Challah

Although my family has a Jewish background, I was raised Christian, but in spite of not being a traditionally observant Jew (although I do celebrate the big holidays), I am trying to learn how to observe some kind of sabbath.

I really love to make challah. I've recently started a goal of trying to make a loaf every Friday morning, since Fridays are a late-start day for me and I don't need to go to work until 1. That way, we have fresh bread for the weekend and something special to eat on Saturdays.

This recipe takes me about two hours, from getting out the ingredients to taking the finished loaf out of the oven to cool. It's not as sweet as a traditional challah, but we like it that way because it means we can use it for sandwiches without getting a weird overly-sweetness to it, but can also sweeten it up with a bit of honey and butter, or with jelly.

I will say, I am generally afraid of trying kneaded, yeasty breads because I have had a lot of past experiences where what I got was a heavy, dry, crumbly loaf of flavorless blah... but this recipe so far has always turned out well for me, very elastic with few crumbs.