Challah with Fresh Eggs from the Farm!

Happy Chickens make delicious eggs:

These delicious eggs, available at the greenmarket in New York City's Union Square from Tello's Green Farm, also make delicious Challah:
I split a dozen of these eggs with a friend every week as part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. In these programs, groups pay a farmer up front for a share of the season's harvest so that the farmer has the resources to buy seed, machinery and whatever else they may need to keep the farm running. We also get a share of vegetables and in a few weeks, fruit!

The dough made of these eggs seemed a little brighter yellow to me than the dough of previous Challah I've made:

Once it was kneaded, I set it to rise:

And a few hours later, it was ready for shaping:

I split the dough into four portions this time...

to make a four-braid. Even when I've made a recipe before, it is fun to try something new with it:

The resulting rich bread benefited greatly from the fresh eggs!

Challah, revisited

I've made Challah before:
I am a big fan of this light, eggy bread.

My challah recipe starts a little differently than some bread formulas - instead of whisking together the dry ingredients and adding in the wet directly, both the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated before they are mixed together. To the left of the usual flour, yeast and salt is a mixture of eggs, oil and water:

I added the wet mixture to the dry and a few minutes later I was ready to knead:

Ten minutes of kneading and two hours of rising later, I decided to have some fun with my challah and make a celebration loaf - basically a smaller braided loaf set on top of a larger one. I sectioned the dough into six boules to rest before further shaping:

Here are the braids of dough...

and here they are on the parchment lined baking sheet:

After another hour of rising and an egg wash the loaf is ready to bake:

I really enjoyed slicing into this bread and being able to see the texture of the six individual pieces of dough that I had shaped:

Even if the ends of the loaf were not quite as pretty as I had hoped - this is a shape the practice!

Poppyseed Bread

A braided poppyseed bread starts like many other breads - flour, yeast, salt and a little dry milk:

Add in your water and oil and mix it up, just like always:

But then add a lot of poppyseeds:


Once those are well mixed in and the dough has risen, it is separated into three pieces and rolled into strands for braiding:

Here is the braided loaf before...

And after rising. An egg wash of a whole egg, a little milk, and some sugar has been brushed onto the loaf:

The slightly sweet egg wash on top lent itself nicely to a sweet and tart cherry jam:

Casatiello

Casatiello is an Italian Brioche - in other words, rich dough enriched further with meat and cheese:

This bread begins with a sponge composed primarily of warm milk, flour and yeast. When it is mixed it has the consistency of pancake batter, though it significantly thickens after standing:

The sponge is mixed with more flour, water and salt, but no more yeast. All of the yeast in this recipe is contained in the sponge. Once this is fully mixed, soft butter is incorporated into the dough:

Once the dough is almost fully kneaded, the meat and then the cheese is folded in:

Here is the dough after a first rise, in a cake pan, the closest to a traditional pan I own (sometimes this bread is baked in coffee cans!):

I pulled the towel off of the dough mid-rise for a progress check:

And here is the dough ready to bake:

Still warm, a slice of this bread is a sandwich fresh from the oven!

Rye Bread - with Raisins?

So, I was going to make some bread for a friend, and he asked for Rye bread, golden raisins. I wasn't so sure about how tasty that might be, but started mixing. This bread started like the light portion of the Marbled Rye Bread - Rye flour, bread flour, molasses, shortening, salt, yeast and water:

Then, as soon as the dough came together, I started adding raisins. For a regular bread with raisins, I would wait until the very end of kneading, but since rye bread becomes sticky if it is kneaded too long, I added the raisins as I began:

I decided that this was less of a sandwich bread so I made it into a boule - you have your dough in a ball, and you stretch it around to the bottom from all angles to create enough surface tension at the top of the loaf. Here it is before the second rise:

And after:

After baking, you can see how the dough was gathered at the bottom:

Marbled Rye Bread

Two doughs, one tasty bread. I had hoped for more contrast in color but the flavor made it worthwhile:

You start with two bowls filled with the same dry ingredients: flour, rye flour, caraway seeds, yeast and salt:

and to one bowl, in addition to water, molasses and a bit of shortening you add some color - I used cocoa powder dissolved in water:


After a short knead (rye flour can get gummy) and a few hours on the counter, here are the two doughs, complete with my handprints from turning them out of their bowls:

You can marble your loaves in a few ways. I elected to try cutting my doughs and clumping them together instead of spiraling:

Here are the loaves ready to go into the oven after a second rise in the pan. At this point, you could really smell the chocolate from the darker dough:

The sandwich ready result did not, however, prevent dessert from being had:

Soft Garlic Knots

All I needed to round out a dinner of lasagna was a good, garlic-laden hunk of bread. I haven't made many rolls, but this recipe for Soft Garlic Knots from King Arthur Flour looked about right:
The recipe calls for a mixture of flour, potato flour, yeast, dry milk, sugar, salt and another flavoring called "pizza dough flavor." Needless to say, I didn't quite have what I needed. After looking at some substitution options I used potato flakes in place of potato flour and a mixture of italian seasonings instead of the "pizza dough flavor." Here are the dry ingredients awaiting the addition of warm water and olive oil:


And ready to be kneaded:
Before a first rise you can see how much smoother the dough gets. This dough smelled great with all of the spice and olive oil, plus the regular smell of yeast at work:


Once the dough had risen, there was some slightly more complicated shaping before the second rise. The dough is split into 16 parts and then rolled into ropes...
Which are then tied into knots. Here is the dough half shaped and ready to rise:

After another hour the knots looked nice and puffy, and were ready to hit the oven:


And finally, brushed with melted butter, garlic and a little more spice, and dusted with freshly grated cheese:
Many thanks to Fritz for the photos featuring my hands at work as well as the shot of the risen dough before it went into the oven.