Kid-Friendly Challah

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Kid-Friendly Challah

Recipe courtesy of Arthur: Postcards from Buster

Ingredients

1 package dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs plus 1 extra egg yolk
3 1/2 cups flour plus some extra

Directions

1. Break three eggs into a small bowl. Beat them slightly with the fork. Set aside.

2. Put the warm water and yeast into a large bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon until the yeast is dissolved. (The yeast is what will make the bread rise.)

3. Add honey and salt to the water and yeast. Stir until dissolved.

4. Add the three beaten eggs to the yeast mixture in the big bowl. Stir in.

5. Add the 3 1/2 cups of flour, a little at a time, and stir into the liquid. The dough will be very sticky.

6. Sprinkle a clean surface with some flour. Knead the dough on the floured surface for five minutes. Since it's so sticky, work the dough with just your fingers (not your whole hands).

7. Put the dough back into the large bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. The cloth will keep the dough from drying out as it rises. Leave it alone for two hours.

8. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. With your fingers, push the dough back down to a smaller size (so it is about the same size as when you made the dough in the first place). Put the dough back onto a floured surface and divide it into three equal portions.

9. Here's where you braid the dough. (This is what makes a challah look like a challah!) Sprinkle some extra flour on each portion of dough to make it a little less sticky. Roll or pull each piece to make a tube of dough about 12" to 15" long. Lay the three tubes next to each other, then braid them. To do this, cross the right one over the middle one (so the tube that WAS the right one is now the middle one). Then cross the left one over the middle one (so the tube that WAS the left one is now the middle one). Keep doing this until it's all braided. Put the braided dough onto a cookie sheet. 

10. Gently crack a fourth egg and pry apart the two halves with your thumbs, making sure to keep the egg in the two half-shells. Then pour the egg yolk from half to half, letting as much egg white as possible dribble out each time into a small bowl. Eventually, you'll have just the yolk in one shell. When you've done that, put the yolk into a different small bowl. Break the yolk with your fingers and smoosh it around. Finger-paint the top of the dough with the yolk. This will make it brown nicely.

11. Put the cookie sheet with the dough on it into the oven. Bake for 35-45 minutes. It should be a nice golden brown and be crusty when tapped with a spoon.