Rainbow challah (Photo: Shutterstock / Kimberly Hoffman)
Janine’s exceptionally good Challah recipe (plus Rainbow challah version for Parshat Shmot)
Challah:
Ingredients:
3 sachets yeast
1 full cup of oil
1 full cup of sugar
2 beaten eggs
3 ¼ cups of warm water
1 full TBSP salt
+/- 9 cups of flour
Method:
- Put some flour into a bowl
- Add yeast and mix well.
- Add sugar and mix well.
- Add eggs and mix well
- Add oil and mix well.
- Add salt and mix well.
- Add the rest of the flour slowly, making sure that you end up with soft, light dough.
- If it’s still sticky, oil your hands and keep kneading until it detaches from the side of the bowl easily.
- Take challah according to the amount of challah used.
- Leave dough to rise +/- 1-2 hours
- Punch down and shape into loaves.
- Let it rise again for a few minutes.
- Paint with egg and bake at 18) degrees (375 f) for 20 minutes (depending on the size of the loaves) until golden brown.
Rainbow Challah version for Parshat Shmot
- Separate your dough into 3 equal pieces.
- Add a drop of any of these colorings (red / blue / green / yellow) to each of the pieces and knead well until the coloring is fully blended.
- Braid your challah using the 3 different colored pieces of dough.
- Bake until golden and enjoy.
Tips and tricks:
For health-conscious mamas and people who don’t like using food coloring- use natural coloring like beet juice and very strongly concentrated carrot juice instead.