Skip to main content

This week's challah

Making this recipe in yet another attempt at a sourdough "challah".
It has a bit of honey, but I fear not enough for my taste... well, we'll see.  24 hours after taking the sourdough starter out from the fridge and reactivating it (twice, once last night and once in the morning), the dough is mixed and proofing on the kitchen table.  If I'm ambitious, I think I'll make the loaves tonight and let them rise a bit in the fridge overnight.
 
Also baking mandelbroit tonight.  Big Shabbos tomorrow, a few people from shul, plus my mother, plus the big kids will be home.
So we're having TWO kinds of meat, for a change:  pickled brisket, plus chicken thighs (I hope Ted bought thighs).
 
Plus several desserts... plus Naomi's lokshin kugel, if we get our act together to make it.
It's one of the guests' birthday tomorrow; just another excuse to sing our special "Happy Birthday" shir ha'maalos!

Friday Postscript:

challah 002 Here they are!  Looking gorgeous, but they are HEAVY, which is usually a baaaaaad sign.

The recipe says the dough won’t rise much while proofing, which it didn’t, so I wasn’t alarmed.  But then, they also didn’t rise much during the final rise, or during baking.

I didn’t slash these loaves, but it looks like steam vented between the braids, which is fine with me.  I know the cracks look unprofessional, but so what?

I am doing something wrong, I’m sure.  Sara’s back this weekend, but I doubt she’ll know… and I doubt I have the patience to bake with her using this sourdough.  She is a great baker, but oh-so-slow and methodical (you have to be, to do it professionally; nobody cares if I ruin two challahs, but you can’t afford to ruin hundreds of loaves in  your job, if it’s a job you want to keep…!).

p.s.  The mandelbroit turned out very nicely, thanks.

Hmm… afterthought:  perhaps the food processor is too violent / hot.  I think next time I will try making sourdough bread by hand, in case that makes a difference.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

What do we tell our kids about Chabad and “Yechi”?

If I start by saying I really like Chabad, and adore the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, z"l, well... maybe you already know where I'm headed. Naomi Rivka has been asking lately what I think about Chabad.  She asks, in part, because she already knows how I feel.  She already knows I’m bothered, though to her, it’s mostly about “liking” and “not liking.”  I wish things were that simple. Our little neighbourhood in Israel has a significant Chabad presence, and Chabad conducts fairly significant outreach within the community.  Which sounds nice until you realize that this is a religious neighbourhood, closed on Shabbos, where some huge percentage of people are shomer mitzvos.  Sure, it’s mostly religious Zionist, and there are a range of observances, for sure, but we’re pretty much all religious here in some way or another. So at that point, this isn’t outreach but inreach .  Convincing people who are religious to be… what? A lot of Chabad’s efforts here are focused on kids, including a