Challah

My parents got me a wonderful present for Hanukkah this year. My mom and I got to attend a class at the Cambridge Culinary Institute. We choose the class "All you Knead (Bread Basics.)" It was such a wonderful time not only to spend the day together but to learn about bread making. We got to choose from a list of breads which one we wanted to attempt. As soon as we both saw challah on the list we knew that would be our bread of choice.


For my mom Challah is a daily occurrence, she eats it every morning for breakfast. For me Challah is a tradition passed from my grandmother to me. Every year my grandmother would make Challah for the high holidays, as she got older she could no longer make the bread, so I decided I would take over the task. The last few years I have been making the Challah, the same recipe that my grandmother made. I was never happy with how the bread came out. So I was really excited to learn about the bread, learn how to knead correctly and be able to make really good Challah for my family.


Challah

2 scant tbsp dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 large eggs
3 egg yolks
2 tsp salt
6 tbsp honey
1 cup hot potato water
1 cup mashed potatoes
6-7 cups all-purpose flour

Egg Wash

1 egg
1 egg white
2 tbsp milk

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, stir in the sugar to allow to activate. While the yeast is growing you should boil your peeled potatoes until soft. Drain the potatoes remembering to keep 1 cup of the potato water. Mash the potatoes until fairly smooth.


In a small bowl beat butter, eggs, yolks, salt, honey, hot potato water and mashed potatoes. (For the class we did everything by hand but you could easily mix this in a bowl with an electric mixer.) Cool the mixture to lukewarm. Add the yeast to this mixture. Beat in two cups of the flour and stir to combine. Add the rest of the flour until the dough is soft and formed.


Knead on a floured surface until dough is soft and springs back when you touch it. (Add more flour as necessary.)

Place into a well greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap place in a warm, wet environment and allow to double in size. This will take about 30 minute to an hour. Turn onto a floured surface and knead the dough for another five minutes. Slice into 12 even pieces. (You will end up with 2 good size challahs. For the class we made 4 smaller ones.) Roll each of the pieces into strands about 14 inches long, and braid 3 together. You will end up with 4 braids. Place two braids on top of each other (ending up with 2 total challahs.) Make sure to pinch the ends of the braids together.


Allow braids to sit until doubled in size again. Mix your egg wash together and brush over braids. Wait 5 minutes and repeat the wash. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 40-45 minutes, until golden brown.


The texture of this bread was very nice, however my mom and I agreed that it was a little lacking in the flavor department, so I think we are going to try this recipe again with a little tweaking.


Going to the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts was a great way to learn about food and baking and spend time with my mom. I would recommend anyone in the Boston area sign up for a course (or two!)

Breakfast for Dinner?

So it's Passover, 8 days of no bread, or more specifically oats, wheat, barley, rice, corn, soy, legumes, and basically everything else that's good. I'm a bit on the strict side when it comes to keeping passover, and not eating any of those foods or anything derived from those foods, including peanut butter and corn syrup. Yeah it's a difficult 8 days.

So besides being overwhelmed with family and helping my mom host the Seders I am sick. Very sick all weekend long. After a lot of matzo ball soup today I am finally feeling better, slightly. So I wanted to make some dinner for Ben and I, something easy and nice to say thank for him taking care of me the last few days. I decided since we were unable to have a Sunday Breakfast this week, that we would do Breakfast for Dinner tonight.


Omelets and Hash Browns it is. Since my hash browns are always mushy I went to a fellow blogger for help. I need to make sure that the potatoes are as dry as possible before cooking them.


This was my experiment in finally hopefully making crispy harsh browns and therefore making Ben fall in love with me for ever and ever. Or something like that...

My Omelet
4 Egg whites
1/2 red pepper chopped
5 or 6 chopped mushrooms
1 oz 50% reduced fat Cheddar Cheese

Ben's Omelet
3 Whole Eggs
1/2 red pepper chopped
5 or 6 chopped Mushrooms
1 small yellow Onion
1.5-2 oz reduced fat Cheddar Cheese


In a pan coated with Pam, sautee down the pepper, mushrooms and onions, for about 3 to 4 minutes until they have reduced over medium heat. They should not be mushy, but nicely cooked, add in scrambled eggs and let cook. Make sure you have a nicely grease pan or else your omelet will get stuck, flip if you can. If not cook on medium low heat until the bottom is browned and the top is cooked add in cheese and fold over in classic omelet style.

Hash Browns
2 small cooking potatoes
salt
pepper
1 Tbs olive oil


Grate the potatoes and get off as much liquid as you can before placing in satuee pan. Add salt and pepper, place in a sautee pan over medium to high heat that is coated with olive oil, make sure that the potatoes are not too thick in any place. Once in pan do not move until browned on one side. Then flip, let cook until brown again, serve and eat.


I also served a bit of matzah with this meal, to replace the bread, but it did no justice. The meal was great, but I needed a peice of toast. We also had a little trouble flipping our omelets, since I don't have huge sautee pans the omelets were a little on the thick side and needed to be flipped so we didn't get one of those diseases from eat raw food. It ended up a bit messier that I had anticipated, but turned out to be great. We sat outside on the summer like night and enjoyed our breakfasts for dinner together.

French Toast with Pecan Banana Syrup

It was time for something different. A sweet Sunday morning breakfast for Ben, no more eggs and potatoes. He might not have been bored of it yet, but I was. I needed something...well great, and I needed to have some creativity in the kitchen. This came out great, but not fabulous. There are many reasons for that. All of which I will address. This became more of an experiment in making syrup than anything else.

French Toast! I thought, it's been forever since I've made that for Ben, I had the bread, eggs, everything I needed, so this seemed like a perfect idea. Now I went to the grocery store I think 2 or 3 times after I had come up with this idea. (I love going grocery shopping.) None of those times I ever thought to buy syrup. Well I did actually think about it and decided against spending 8 or so dollars on an entire bottle of syrup for one single breakfast and besides my roommates would end up using it. Now, I'm all for sharing, but between the beer and everything else they "borrow" I thought against it. It seemed a waste of money, and usually one of my roommates does have some syrup in the refrigerator so I thought borrowing a squeeze or two they might not notice. I did however notice the bottles of Jack Daniels and vodka that "disappeared."


Ok back to the french toast. Sunday, morning, well afternoon, I went downstairs to make breakfast, got the bread out, made the egg soak, and started looking in the refrigerator to find the syrup. NO SYRUP, Ahh. Whats french toast without syrup, its just disappointing. So I vaguely remembered watching a Paula Dean episode where she makes the syrup that goes on some tragically buttery breakfast. Alright, lets experiment. First the recipes:

Best French Toast

2 1/2 pieces white bread*
2 Extra large Eggs
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon


*Challah is the best bread to use for french toast, but in a pinch you can use anything even french bread or plain white as I did.


I cut the bread so that they would fit better in my smallish size pan but either way works. I didn't want to be cleaning every pan in the house after breakfast. The key to making a good Sunday morning breakfast is to get greatness and little clean up. Combine Eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon in a bowl, add the bread to the egg wash and let soak for a few seconds on each side. Do not leave in the egg was for too long, especially with thinner slices of break, the liquid will start to break down the break and it will just be mush. Place in pan that have either butter or Pam in the bottom, and let cook over medium heat. Flip only once, it will need maybe 4 or 5 minutes on each side, but this also highly depends on the thickness of your bread.

Plate and cover in syrup. Dust with powdered sugar for a professional look.


Ok my syrup was almost like caramel, and this is the only fault that Ben found with the dish. By the end the thickness of the syrup was too much, he loved the taste of it, so therefore managed to clear the plate, but did comment that it was on the thick side.

Pecan Banana Syrup

4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 whole pecans
1/2 banana sliced


Melt the butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat, add in the brown sugar and the honey. Stir to combine, let the sauce start to bubble up, this will start to thicken the syrup, take off heat, because you do not want it to burn add in the pecans put back over low heat and let warm. Start slicing in the banana and let sit in syrup for just a few seconds to let warm through. Top on french toast and serve.

It was great, but not amazing, maybe I put too much syrup on the plate when serving? Oh well it was a crisis averted, and a successful experiment.

Potato Latkes the Wrong Way

You didn't think we could do it, did you. Potatoes, again. Oh but we were able to. I mean what's a Sunday without Sunday morning potatoes? As I've told you before, I generally wake up before Ben and lay in bed contemplating this weeks Sunday morning Potato experience. This week, I had just one red potato to use, well I mean I had more potatoes, but potato is just one part of Sunday morning breakfast (except last week when I was too lazy to stock up on groceries.) This week I tried to go above and beyond for Sunday morning. It included Red Potato Latkes, an Everything bagel, and good old scrambled eggs (plain and simple.)


Potato Latkes are a traditional Jewish food and I think each family has their own recipe. I know how to make MY mothers potato latkes, but this Sunday morning when I was only making one potato I had to tailor the recipe a little, because the quantity of potato was so small. Latkes are traditionally fried in vegetable oil and appear at a majority of the holidays but especially during Channukah where the celebration of oil burning for 8 nights is celebrated with fried foods. These are good as a side dish, main coarse (just add sour cream and sugar or applesauce) or as we found out this week as a Sunday morning addition.


The reason why these potatoes are titled the wrong way because the recipe is a little different, and I think made these latkes special, not necessarily better than traditional ones, but still good enough for Ben to gobble up and ask for more.

Potato Latkes the Wrong Way (small batch)
1 medium Red Potato
1 Egg Yolk
2-3 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Pepper
1/8 tsp Garlic Salt
1/4 tsp dried Parsley

Grate entire potato on the thicker side of a hand grater. If you do it too small you'll end up with potato mush. You want it about the same side as if you were making hash browns. Add in yolk and flour and mix until you have a little bit of a bater with the potato, egg, flour mixture. Meanwhile in a sautee pan heat vegetable oil to medium high heat. Add seasonings to the potato mixture and stir to combine. Once oil has heated spoon potato into the pan and let cook until golden brown about 5 minutes or so. Flip and let the other side brown. Once finished on both size, about 10 minutes (depending on how big you make your latkes) let sit on a paper towel to drain any excess oil. You want the outside to be crunchy. Then eat!


Normally you would be making more than one potato and I would then recommend using the entire egg and additional flour (to make a smooth consistency.) I would also say that if you have a fry-a-lator or a deep set pan to fill with oil and really fry these potatoes instead of my quick-fix apartment style solution. You can add in a cut up sauteed onion to the mixture or any seasonings that you prefer. Its really a great recipe that you can tailor to the tastes you like. Red potatoes are not the traditional, either Yukon gold or Idaho potatoes are really what most people use. But use what you have and make it how you like.


So try it out. Its good the wrong way.