It's hard to explain just how fond I am of challah.
I'm a bit nutty about all breads in general, being a long-time bread baker. But challah is in a class by itself.
It's the centerpiece of the celebration of Shabbat, along with wine or grape juice. Since I am not much of a wine connoisseur, the focus of my great pleasure on Shabbat is the challah. And because I follow the Kabbalistic Shabbat seder, I eat challah three times during the evening and the next day, so is really nice when the challah is at its very best.
I used to bake just two loaves every week, but recently I found a new recipe that makes a gigantic batch of dough. The reason being, if you use a large enough amount of flour, you can say a blessing when separating a small portion of the dough, which you burn in the oven, or in my case, the woodstove.
Last time I made challah, I made two mistakes. I put a bit too much flour in the dough, AND I baked it just a bit too long. This resulted in challah that was not exactly a joy to eat. And because I had so much of it, [I keep the extra loaves in the freezer] , I was eating sub-par challah for about 5 weeks. This really harshed my mellow on Shabbat, I can tell you.
Today it was time to bake new challah, and I was meticulous about the flour and the baking. I'm pretty sure I succeeded in producing proper challah this time. I won't know for sure until later.
This is only 1/2 of the dough I made. I put the rest of it in the freezer. I'm experimenting to see how that will work. I'll have to thaw it out and see how it does being shaped into loaves and rolls. I've heard you can do that, I've just never really tried it.
I must run to the store in a little bit though, one of my favorite things to put on challah is apricot jam. And I am clean out of it right now. This won't do, because if it is as I hope, this challah deserves some nice jam on it.
I'll let you know how it goes.
But perfect challah or not, Good Shabbos my friends!
