Claire Saffitz Makes Perfect Challah and Babka | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking

that's so good oh I have to stop I'm a picker that's a bad habit I like if I wasn't thinking and there was like a pecan pie or something I'd seriously just come and pick the top one it's so rude I really have have to stop Hi everyone, I'm Claire Saffits and we're back with more episodes of Try This At Home In the past, we've tackled some big projects like croissants and bagels and today I'm showing them to you. a little simpler recipe but no less versatile and it's classic chala bread and it's surprisingly simple it's a great recipe for beginners who are just trying to start making bread you don't need a stand mixer it's all done by hand and then I'll show you a couple of different ways to shape it and then another application which is cinnamon vodka, so I love making

this

recipe so versatile, so good and so fun to make.

I have a lot of memories of eating

challah

, I mean. I'm Jewish, I grew up in Saint Louis and I went to a Reform Jewish congregation where there was only one

challah

, you know, every time, my first memories are eating like store-bought holla and I didn't like it, but I love turning it into a

home

and I have come to greatly appreciate the qualities of Valhalla, so chala is an enriched bread dough, meaning eggs and fat are added. When I was researching and looking at a lot of different hala recipes, I noticed that a lot of them require a really large amount of yeast, like tablespoons of yeast to make one or two loaves, and generally, the smaller the amount of yeast, the longer the yeast. the fermentation, the better the quality of the bread, the better the flavor, the better the texture.

I wanted to use some kind of solid bread-making principles in

this

challah to achieve not only something really beautiful and tasty, but also to make a really good quality crumble and as you know, it tends to go stale more slowly and last longer and generally has tastes. Better yet, the first step of the recipe is to make something called preferment. A preferment is a mixture of a portion of flour and liquid in the recipe that is mixed with the yeast and allowed to activate. at room temperature and then added to the dough it's very easy this is called sponge cake so a teaspoon of yeast use a large bowl because this is the bowl you're going to mix the rest of the dough in and then I have a little warm tap water here and I'm just going to add a quarter cup.

There's like a dehydrated layer around the yeast and the active dry yeast is to dissolve it and get the yeast to wake up and be ready to rise the bread, so go ahead and beat that. together until the yeast dissolves now half a cup of room temperature tap water and this will cool it down a little bit because we want a nice slow fermentation then I'm going to add a cup and a quarter of flour so about 170 grams and this is one serving of the flour in the final recipe, so this goes after you've added the flour.

Go ahead, you can use a flexible spatula like this one or a bowl scraper and just stir until all the flour is hydrated and you'll have this. It's kind of a thick dough mixture, so you just want to make sure there are no floury spots and I like to make sure the sides of the bowl are very, very well scraped, but you don't need to mix any further, like combine everything. Well, okay, this is ready and now I'm going to cover it and let it rest instead of using plastic wrap. You can cover it with a plate like this.

We'll let this sit at room temperature until I'll notice a dramatic transformation, it will loosen, expand in volume a couple of times, even triple in volume and the surface will be super bubbly and even a little domed so it will look like it's on the verge. of the collapse and that's when you're ready to mix the dough, so this is the cake that we mixed a few hours ago, it actually went a little long. I know it's a little past its prime because it's a little cratered, so it was super domed and bubbly and there's like a high water mark around the edge, but it's okay if it goes a little bit, it's happened to me plenty of times. , it's not a big deal, but we want to mix the dough. as quickly as possible, all the water that is hot in the dough is already in the cake, so the only other liquid ingredients I have are eggs and then my sweetener and the fat, so again I'm using olive oil and honey.

I love holla flavors. I have a third of a cup of olive oil and then honey. Okay, so I'll add two whole eggs and one yolk. This is mostly whisked just to break up the eggs and then I'll add. this to my bowl with our preferment again, everything just mixes here in this bowl. Oh, I should say that I'm using bread flour here, which is an important part of the recipe, so bread flour is a high protein flour and that higher protein. corresponds to the amount of gluten that can develop in the dough and it's that gluten that's really important for the structure of the chala, the texture of the crumb, all of that, so I have three extra cups of bread flour again, I recommend weighing everything and then a tablespoon of salt, so I'm using diamond crystal kosher salt, it seems like a lot of salt, but like it's a lot of dough, it

makes

a really big loaf and you really need all that salt to bring out the flavor of everything. what is it.

Texture is also important, so now I'm going to use. You can use a flexible spatula, but I'm going to use a bowl scraper. Make sure you scrape the bottom of the bowl because you want to incorporate that pre. and you can see it has kind of a crazy stringy texture to it, so we want to mix everything together and then make sure we have a clean work surface because we're going to need this on hand, right on the counter, if you want. use your stand mixer you certainly could, you should mix your preferment in the bowl of the stand mixer and then follow all of these instructions and then I would still mix this part by hand because the dough hook doesn't like to bump the sides of the bowl easily , so go ahead and mix everything like this by hand and then put it in the stand mixer with the dough hook.

Okay, this has come together for the most part, it's like a shaggy dough at the moment I have a few dry bits, this

makes

a nice sticky dough at first, so I need to generously flour my work surface with a little bit of flour. table and then all this mixture is scraped onto that surface and then a little more flour on top and this is the stage where the dough is manipulated and felt as it is. It's really important because we're going to knead this together, we're going to work it for about 10 to 15 minutes until it's super soft and pliable and I'll show you a test for when you know you're done kneading. process, so kneading is a process of working the dough and developing all that gluten and it's a movement that's like folding and pushing out.

I like to work with my left the fleshy part of my left palm with my right hand on top to give it more oomph and then it's really like pressing the dough and sliding it across the surface, then I give it a little rotation and a fold and it's the same type of push, so I can tell at this stage that this dough doesn't feel particularly sticky, so you may not need to add additional flour, but as you work it and that flour is hydrated, it may get a little sticky, so If it starts to stick to your hand or the surface, just add a little more flour and you're done.

We'll keep adding flour as we go if at any point it gets a little sticky if it falls off your hand if it sticks to your hand it's sticky but if it sticks to your hand and then lets go it's sticky okay then it's picked up like most of those dry bits and if you have little dry areas you can roll the dough over them to pick them up, it's still quite marbled and looks patterned so we want to just knead this until it gets really soft, really pliable. nice and stretchy too and this is like a good 10 or 15 minutes of kneading by hand, so like I said, the recipe is designed to be flexible depending on what type of flour you're using, its flours absorb moisture differently, so if it feels like you're adding too much flour, don't be alarmed, it's normal to have to add even an extra half cup of flour as you need as much as you need both types of flour.

I've been eating this for probably 10 to 15 minutes, so now I'm going to show you a test to determine if you're done kneading and you're ready to move on to bulk fermentation, so you're going to pinch. a piece of dough that you like to pinch it with your fingers like this, so that it's like a golf ball size piece of dough or so and you're going to take your fingertips and just flatten it and then you're going to gently spread it out in all directions and flatten it more and the idea is we're checking for enough gluten development so this is something called a window test and you don't want to throw it away too quickly.

We have to do it a little slowly, but what we want to achieve here is an almost film-like piece of dough that is so thin that light can pass through it and that's how you know that there is enough elasticity in the dough and enough development of gluten you can go on so here you can actually see it's good to hold it up to a light source to double check yeah this is our window pane again if it breaks before you get to this point go ahead and continue kneading and then just if you're already there stick it back into the dough if you're making raisin hala which is the traditional challah eaten on rosh hashanah the jewish new year you're going to want to soak the raisins so I take half a cup of raisins golden and I simply poured a little hot water on them to hydrate them and give them volume.

Dried fruits, particularly raisins or raisins, have a very high concentration of sugar and it is so high that it will actually draw moisture out of the dough and dry it out. If you don't soak them first, that's the purpose of soaking so they've been soaking and they're nice and soft and plump, I'm going to drain them so I drained them and now I'm going to pat the raisins dry because otherwise. If they are too wet it will be difficult to incorporate them into the dough and now I am going to show you how to incorporate them to knead them, what you want to do is flatten the dough, so just press it. with the palm of your hand it doesn't have to be any particular shape you just want to flatten it out and create a big surface now I just needed this dough to be a little bit springy if you get a lot of spring you can let it rest for about five minutes.

You can also use friction between the dough and the surface to help it flatten out a little, so once you've flattened it out until it's just under an inch thick, then you'll have Let's spread the raisins over the surface. and then gather everything into a ball and then we're going to knead it until all the raisins are evenly distributed so you can roll them or just fold them. Doing it like this and this is just an easier way to do it, it means all the raisins are enclosed and you're not dealing with raisins all over the surface and trying to pick them up and get them into the center of the dough I can feel them inside I don't love raisins I wouldn't go for this holla but I think it's a great option because it's very traditional but this is what I like about the recipe is that you can use the dough in so many ways and this is just an application but this is ready to go and we have several other doughs that we set up ahead of time to show you all the variations so this is just that one round variation for rosh hashanah and then We have our sixth strand and our cinnamon vodka so I'm really excited to start that forming process , but first we have to let this rise, so like I said, it goes into a bowl, you can sprinkle it with a little bit of flour first and then. in a clean container, we'll let this sit again at warm room temperature, something in a warm place that's in that 80 degree range is really good for testing, it'll get super pillowy and soft and when you touch it it'll spring back. back, but leave a small indentation and that will take you an hour or two, possibly even longer depending on the temperature, we have our hollow dough that has risen, so I want to show you what it looks like.

I'd say it's double, maybe even a little more than double. in size and I wish you could feel what it feels like because it's so padded underneath when I press down you can see it comes back and that's an indication that there's a lot of gas in there, but then it has an indentation so this looks great, it looks great. feels great, I'm really excited to braid it into a six strand braid. The first time I tried a six-strand braid, I was trying to read it like it was a recipe and I thought my brain couldn't, I couldn't follow it and and it's a little complicated, if you lose the process during it, it's a little hard to go back. to get you on track and see where you are, but I will guide you through all the steps that really make me the most beautiful. hollow braid through the six strand braid, so I'm going to turn the dough over now.

I can't tell you exactly how much weight each piece will be because it depends on how much flour you added and your particular dough, but it will be somewhere between 180 and 190 grams per piece, so I like, oh, I feel so good , it's really fun to feel and handle it, it'sa really satisfying texture recipe, I'm going to stick with 190 a piece and see where that takes me at 90. Oh, okay, I'm really going to be more like oh, I'm really going to be more like 180. You don't have to be so crazy Therefore, you can do it if you are missing a couple of grams, it is not a big deal.

I like to group everything and put it inside. This tends to give you a nice soft strand. Now another thing you can do is if you really feel like it. If there are air bubbles in there, go ahead and pop them and squeeze them out because any large air pocket will make it difficult to spread. You actually shouldn't need much flour or even any flour at all, it's that friction between the bubbles. surface and the dough that will help you elongate it and, you know, stretch it to the size that you want, so I'm just going to apply even pressure along my hands back and forth from the center out and I also like taper the pieces at the ends a little bit and that gives you this really nice, evenly shaped braid now if you need extra friction, like if your dough is tough or you have a little extra flour and you can't get that. friction with the surface, you can just put a couple drops of water on your surface and smear it and that will help you feel like I'm not actually having that much friction, so I could use a little bit of water, I literally just wet my hand, it's okay that really helped a lot so let's look at the length of this guy okay it's about 18 inches so now I'm going to roll out all my dough pieces to the same length and then once you have a measurement. just use it as a reference point for the rest, so all my threads have now gotten longer and longer on these ropes.

Now I'm ready to start braiding. I'm going to take a quick step, although I have some bench flowers right here. I'm going to dust the strands very lightly with flour just to coat them, so if you like to mess them up and have to go back and detangle, then you know you won't have a lot of stuff stuck to you, it also helps preserve some definition. between the strands while it's baking, so I like this little step, dusting them a little bit and then I like to give them a roll through the flower. Now I'm going to orient the strands vertically, so I'm going to line them all up next to each other, okay, now to start your braid, you're going to gather everything at the top, so just bring all the ends together and pinch, and now This is where you need to pay special attention when I was teaching myself how to do this.

I watched YouTube videos. Because you really have to see it done. It's very difficult to follow when described in words, so have your laptop next to you while you do this. Have a clean finger. like press, you know, like the space bar to start and stop the video and just follow me. I'm going to go slowly, so the first step will be to cross the outer right strand so that it is on the far left like you are not. you want to apply too much tension at this point, so you're just going to bring it in loosely and then you're going to take what was originally the leftmost thread and that's now second from the left, so this one here and you're going to cross it all the way over to the right end. to have this little twist here at the top, okay, so take the other strands and separate them a little bit with a space in the middle so that you have a group of two here and a group of two here, okay, so you're going to take the first thread that we moved that was here and that is now up here, the one that is at the top, so you will see how this one is crossed at the bottom and this one is crossed at the top you are going to take the top one and you are going to move it up down towards the center but you're going to group it with the ones on the right so that the top one if you're moving from the left is going to go down and group with your two strands here on the right, this will bend down so now I have a group of three strands right here, I'm going to take the second strand from the right or the outermost kind of strand of the group of three and I'm going to cross it all the way to the left end, so now again I have my two strands going to the sides and then I have my four threads here in the middle with two on the left and two on the left.

At that point I'm going to take the thread on the top right, which is now the one on top, so I have my horizontal threads here, the top one, I'm going to bring it to the middle and I'm moving from the right, so I'm going to group it with the two threads on the left, just be patient, okay, so you're going to take one of the two types of horizontal threads, the one at the top, and you're going to take it towards the middle, grouping it with the threads on the left. opposite side, so moving from the right to group with the strands on the left, I now have a group of three strands on this side.

I'm going to take the outermost strand or the second one from the left and cross this one here so that it remains. It's just a matter of repeating that movement taking the type of strands that are on the sides, taking the top one, moving it towards the center and grouping it with the strands on the opposite side, so now, when that's how you know if you're getting lost in the process. Take a look at your settings. I can see here that I have three threads on this side, so I know that I have to move the outer thread to the opposite side and now taking the thread that is on top moving it from far away.

Right to center left. Now I have three strands here. I'm going to take the outer strand of the group of three, move it to the far right, and continue the process. Makes sense? Yes, okay, it's a pattern. Okay, now once you get to that, once you've done it a couple of times and you get into this, where you'll feel it start to apply a little bit of tension, like you want to create a little bit of tension in the braid. and that will help you get your dough to rise really well, so that means just giving it a nice little tug as you work, so you can see that I'm gently pulling on it as I move it and you can see that makes this pattern incredibly beautiful. with kind of a high braid in the center and then like a bottom braid underneath it's so pretty okay so I'm at a point where it's like I can't really figure out my next step so this is where I just I say, bye, you know, a tablespoon of dough or whatever, so that's

perfect

ly fine, okay, now I have this beautiful long thin braid and now I'm just going to transfer it to my lined baking sheet if you know you can use it as a bench scraper, a bowl scraper to help you or you can just pick it up to move it around this looks so pretty, I'm so excited about it. and now we're going to let this proof, but before we let it rise, I'm actually going to do a quick layer of beaten egg.

Now what I love about holla is that incredibly polished shiny exterior and the best way to achieve that is to do two layers of egg wash, I'm just going to do a thin layer like each little piece of dough that you don't want, like a lot of eggs piled up in the baking sheet, so you know, a thin, thin but full layer, okay, spoiler. Here is the baked holla and here is my untested braid, so this is very important because I want you to see the size difference. I once talked to a baker who told me that the goal of making bread is to take the least amount of ingredients and make them as big as possible.

This is what I want to illustrate here is how important the revision process is if you want to get from here to here like the first few times I did this I underestimated it because I was going for that just It looks normal, it's twice the size and it really needs to last longer. The egg wash here is like a little sticky, so I'm going to grease the plastic wrap, that's an important step, so you want to cover it loosely with plastic, so it's kind of like hanging it up, letting it fall there as loosely as possible. that I can, so now that we saw the six-strand braid, I will show you the technique to make the round, which is much easier, so I will discover. this this is the dough we mixed this morning and you can see the same texture like this that's one of the don't be alarmed it's not bruised this is like a spread raisin don't look at that same texture like that like a pillow, so airy, it's really very funny that you like to touch it.

Now I don't need the scale for this because the forming is much simpler and the uniformity is much less important, so I'm just going to divide the dough in half and this is I can actually look at it, it's much less important that these are the same weight , okay, and now I'm going to take each piece and roll each one into a long snake that's about 28 inches long. I like to pinch not only to start lengthening. Use it and form the shape but squeeze out the big air pockets because that makes it harder, same basic proportions of the snakes so you know they are mostly uniform but slightly tapered at the ends which makes the Training is a little easier and you can see it.

I like that, even if maybe you wouldn't have needed your raisins very thoroughly, but this technique like this for forming shapes will spread very evenly even if you didn't need them as thoroughly, so I'm going to take my two. strands I'm going to cross over each other right in the center making an x, then you're going to go to the side and you're going to twist the strands and again this will help you create tension. in the dough and it's that tension that's going to form like a really nice, even tall bar, okay, so you go ahead and turn the other side as well, okay, and then you're going to start at one end of your turn and you're going to be I'm going to start. to fold it over itself and roll the dough and then once you get to the end, just bring it up and now you have this beautiful tall, I think it looks more ornate than it actually is to form there. but it's really a quick way to shape it and then do the same with greased plastic wrap and we'll look for the same doneness indicators before baking.

Okay, this is a fully prepared braided hollow dough, so I'll show you the indicators. of a fully fermented bread and I think under-fermentation is one of the potential pitfalls of this recipe, it's easy to rush a little and put it in the oven prematurely, so you really need to be on the safe side. that you see that expansion in size, to me it's like it easily doubles in size and visually as I can see, I can almost see the little air bubbles underneath and it's super super light and when I press the dough, it comes back pretty quickly but it leaves an indentation, so it looks really good, I'm going to give it a final coat of egg wash and I have my oven at 350.

Be careful when you apply the egg wash because there's so much air in there that you don't want to like puncture the dough or deflate anything or puncture it in any place. Also note that you can refrigerate the dough. I forgot to mention this when we shaped it, but you can also refrigerate the unfermented bread with the beaten egg and the oiled piece of plastic wrap. then take it out of the refrigerator the next day and let it sit on the counter and since it's starting out cold it will take a little longer, but it's a good option if you want to split the time and the work, okay, so I'm going to go in the oven, this will bake for 30-35 and I'm looking for a super deep golden brown color, it will sound hollow on the bottom when I tap it and I can also take the internal temperature if I'm not sure.

So if it's a very well fermented dough you shouldn't need to take the temperature, the color indicator should be enough, but if you're not sure you can always place a thermometer in the center and look for between 190 and 200 to record. so 30 to 35 minutes, sorry, one thing, if you want to add sesame seeds or poppy seeds, this is the time to do it, do it after that second layer of beaten egg, they will stick very well. I like to be super generous with it, but I'm going to leave this simple so we can appreciate the raw beauty of the braid.

This is my holla with raisins. It's been fermenting for about an hour and a half and looks great. A fantastic application of our holographic dough is Bobcat and this one. It's a cinnamon lynx and I kept it dairy free because we know the dough is dairy free so why add it? You know we're making the filling, keep it parv and plus I'm doubling the olive oil flavor. and this is such a wonderful and slightly unexpected take on cinnamon vodka, so the dough, you know, we make a whole recipe, the dough is divided in half and you make two bobkas.

You will need two loaf pans. I have a piece of parchment paper. cut the width of the parchment paper to fit the length of the loaf pan that way and I have a little extra olive oil here to brush on okay so I just have a thin layer of oil the parchment just presses down and up. sides and smooth it out really well, try to remove any air bubbles if you can, so I have a little bit of excess and that excess is useful for lifting the vodka out of the pan just to prevent the edges of the parchment from curling and sticking together.

On the top of the vodka, I like to give them a little crease so that as the lynx bakes, some of that brown sugar filling seeps to the bottom and mixes with the oil and turns it into an oily olive caramel. It's so delicious. Don't get me wrong, I love the buttery flavor. The buttery flavor is great, but it's such a satisfying, meeting-a-butter bobcat kind of twist. That kind of thing isokay so you can set it aside and then I'll mix up my filling so I said I have almond flour and brown sugar and then salt and a tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

Then I'm also going to grate a teaspoon of fine orange zest into this bowl. I love the combination of brown sugar and orange zest and orange can be overpowering very, very easily, but just a little bit of zest perfumes everything and it's that kind of flavor that when you taste it you think what it is, you know what it is that kind of a little extra layer of flavor is really good, so just mix this really really well, crush up any little lumps of brown sugar or almond flour, if you find them, I'm going to reserve a quarter cup of this mixture and this is going to be what I sprinkle on top, so when I was developing the recipe I kept going back and forth, like should I top it with a glaze, should I top it with a streusel and I just decided to sprinkle a little bit of the filling on top because I like that texture that I want and a little more sweetness and I don't have to add an extra step, so the first step of the recipe is to have the holographic dough ready to use.

When you poke it, you can see that the dough appears again. which is an indication that there's a lot of air in there, but it leaves an indentation, so this looks great. I'm going to take it out and divide it in half, so I'm just going to look at half and then as you unfold it. one half because you don't want the other half of the dough to continue to ferment and rise, you're going to put this on like a small rimmed baking sheet or on a plate, cover it and put it in the refrigerator, so now I'm going to roll this out.

I'm going to sprinkle some flour on my work surface, so go ahead, I mean, you're going to eliminate all the gas because you're going to roll it, but I like to tidy up. I press it into the shape I want with my fingers first and I'm going to roll this out into a very long rectangle about 24 inches long and eight inches wide, go ahead and roll it out and I have a little bit of flour, but I'm not going to use too much because a little bit of friction between the work surface and the dough is really helpful because it helps roll out the dough because I want it to be quite thin and I want it to be thin because I want a nice dramatic spiral inside the bob cup okay I think I'm almost at eight if it's coming back very stubbornly because we're rolling it out so thin, just cover it lightly on your work surface and let it sit for five or ten minutes. with a damp towel, so to form the vodka I have a quarter cup of olive oil, four tablespoons, but that's for two vodkas, so I'm just going to drizzle two tablespoons or half that amount on the surface and this is what which really creates that caramelization.

The layer on the bottom is that mixture between the olive oil and the brown sugar and go ahead and brush this over the surface of the dough and leave a little bit of an edge on the longer side that's facing away from you, so it doesn't this side but the opposite side, but you can go as far as every other edge, then I'm going to sprinkle half of the filling, you're just going to cover the entire surface, but again avoiding that little clean edge on the longer side, so once you do it Now I'm going to go ahead and apply the filler to the surface and spread it out so that it has an even layer everywhere okay it's very even and now I'm going to roll it up so I'm going to start at the end closest to me and I zoom out, so it's helpful to start with a little bit, you know, working from side to side, left to right or right to left, just to start that spiral effect and one thing that I also like What I do is give it a little tug as I'm going to help stretch the dough, stretch it towards you and then roll it up and that will help create a more defined spiral so now it's all rolled up on this.

Kind of a tight spiral log and then once you have it rolled it rests on that seam or had that clean clear edge of dough and I like to give it a little pinch just to seal the dough right there and this is also a chance to even out the thickness a little bit, okay, now I'm ready to form the twist, so the vodka has this kind of double spiral when you open it because I twist this log, so I'm just going to trim it. the ends right where it's like a little bit more, the thickness is uneven and I basically want to trim anywhere that doesn't have full coverage of the filling and then I'm going to cut it in half crosswise, you can see it's starting. to shrink back a little bit so you're going to take your pieces of dough you're going to cross one over the other in the center like an the rest of the way, so now I have this beautiful twist and then this is going to go into the prepared loaf pan and now it's the final step.

Before we let this test is to press down and flatten that twist a little bit so it fills some of the bottom, so this is our vodka, it's ready for its second rise, that's the testing stage, so I'm going to cover it. . and let it sit again like in a warm place at room temperature. I'm going to show you the doneness indicators when it's tested and then show you how to flavor it, you know, finish it with a little extra topping and bake it. Meanwhile, I'm going to form the second one like I made the first one with the remaining filling and olive oil.

Okay so the bobka's are proof, I'd say they've doubled in size, they've mostly filled like to the bottom of the pan and that's a good indicator that I've done this and that's partly why I like to press them down. down and flatten them a little to help you determine how much they have grown and there again you have that spring and I know I've repeated this many times, but the spring back is an indication that there is enough gas built up in the dough, so when you put it in the oven it will get super light and I have a preheated oven at 350 and these can bake on the sides. next to each other so you don't have to bake them one at a time, so about two tablespoons of the reserved filling on top.

I watched Seinfeld not on purpose, but I've just been watching a lot of Seinfeld and I did it. Watch the Bobcat episode, which is also the black and white cookies episode. Great episode. Elaine is like the lesser cup. Nobody likes vodka with cinnamon. Not true, I'm not sure at all. Okay, they look great. I'll put them in the oven and these. They will last 40 to 45 minutes and I like to rotate them to make sure they bake evenly. They fit well. I'm really excited to cut the challah and try them, especially the papka, it smells so good so make sure the breads have cooled completely, you don't want to cut the bread while it's hot because you end up allowing all the steam to escape and it dries out the crumb, so try to be patient and I'll show you what the dough is like. how the bread sounds, you can hear it sounds kind of hollow and that's how you know you tested it and baked it really well now, traditionally holla is broken, but I'm going to cut it out because I want you to see like a profile of the inside what the bread looks like. crumb well, this is what the crumb looks like it's super it even has a nice golden color from the honey and olive oil it's nice it's like it has a silkiness to it, that's kind of I like the way I like to describe the texture , so I'm actually going to cut a slice, pull it apart, and show you what it looks like, smells like, has a lot of yeast in it.

I buy some of that olive oil and I love the way it textures like you can scoop it out, it's like string cheese, you can take strands out of it, little threads which to me is like the classic hollow texture, I love eating it this way, like little threads, okay, that's the classic, simple holla. Now I'm going to cut out the lynx so I can show it to you. I love how they turned out. I love the proportions. The shape is so nice. It's like this cute little squat bread. I love the texture of the crumble on top. and I'm really excited to cut out and show you the spiral.

Wait for it to cool completely before slicing and using a bread knife. I'm going to show you what it looks like. Can you see the steam because it is? Hot we look it's after five we all have to go

home

so I cut it hot but try to let it cool look at the spiral it looks so good I love the definition and it's that almond flour the one that gives you a really defined look. spiral, but it's not, we didn't have to add as much sugar to get there, so it's like a very slightly sweet vodka that makes the best toast.

It's so good, I love this app for holla, you don't normally see holla or like it. You know a style of dough like chala as a base for vodka, but it's really

perfect

because it's rich, it's light and this is a dairy-free version where you try it and you wouldn't know it's dairy-free, it's so rich and delicious. and the smell is crazy. Can I taste it? The silky quality of the crumb is really enhanced by that ribbon. I love the little bit of texture from the almond flour. This to me is like the best cinnamon toast, but wrapped in one package.

So delicious, I mean this is really a recipe that you can make anytime and any occasion, you don't even need a reason, but of course, with the Jewish New Year approaching, try the studded raisins and then once you you feel comfortable with the dough, it's something you can make all the time once a week if you want and I really can't think of a better recipe to dip your toes into the baking pool than classic holla like this. a fun recipe to make with basically no equipment required and a great way to practice your six strand braid so thank you so much for watching and I'm so excited to bring you more episodes to try this at home.