Challah and sourdough - two different kinds of yummy!

Challah bread is yellow, soft and delicious. It makes great french toast and bread pudding. The recipe from Peter Reinhart's book makes 3 large braided loaves and if you put the three parts in separate containers to ferment, you can make the loaves on consecutive days. His recipe is easy to do, just mix everything together, put it in a container to ferment in the refrigerator and shape and bake the loaves within 4 days. It really gives you flexibility in your schedule for baking. His book can probably be found at the public library and is also available on line as a PDF file: Peter Reinhart's artisan breads every day.

The eggs I used for the challah loaves are Marans. They are deep caramel brown on the outside with darker brown spots on the shells. The chickens that produce them originated in Marans, France. There is a local farmer who has the Marans chickens and there are usually several of these eggs in the cartons.

The recipe measures the quantities for the ingredients in grams, so when I separate the eggs to use them, I pour the yolks in a bowl and keep opening eggs until I get to the required amount. This is usually between 8 and 10 yolks. No wonder the bread is so yellow!

A egg wash with a whole egg gives the outer crust a deep golden color when baked. This dough is a dream to work with. The directions in Mr. Reinhart's book are easy to follow and the slow fermentation in the refrigerator makes the scheduling of your baking time easy.









Today I tried Dan Leader's Quintessential French Sourdough, Pain au levain. This bread begins with a stiff dough levain. The directions for making this are in the book. It is an easy sourdough to use because the levain fits in a quart jar thus not taking up much space. This bread is made with the levain, bread flour,  and smaller amounts of whole wheat flour and rye flour and salt. The levain is refreshed overnight with water and flour and the fermenting and proofing happen on the next day. I use a Kitchen Aid mixer for most of the kneading unless the recipe calls for a large amount of flour. This recipe is easy to knead in the mixer. The dough was shaped into two bâtards. The taste is wonderful! The crust is crisp due to the placement of ice cubes in a pan below the baking stone. This creates steam during the first minutes of baking.  This recipe is definitely worth making. Mr. Leader's directions are easy to follow. His book Local Breads is a must have for your baking library. If you buy the 2007 edition like I did, go to this link to find some corrections in a PDF file.

Here you can see the inside of the French Sourdough. Wish you could taste it too!

Like I said in the title of this post:

Two

Kinds

of

Yummy!

Happy Baking!