I saw this neat recipe for 100 minute challah on yeastspotting, contributed by Simply Enjoy Food.
The idea is simple. You just mix together dough ingredients, a la no knead bread, and then develop the dough through a stretch and fold method. Also, you speed up the fermentation through sticking the dough in a 200 degree oven. After just 14 minutes, stretch and fold, another 14 minutes stretch and fold, and then another 9 minutes before shaping. The preheat your oven to 350 degrees and shape your challah. Bake it off after a mere 5 minutes rise.
The dough was very wet after just mixing, which is good, nothing to be alarmed about. Everyone says how challah should be made with a dry dough, but I have found (and others I know concur) that wetter is better with challah dough.
After two stretch and folds, the dough went from unmanageable to just lovely. I veered from the time schedule because I had to run out on an errand at the beggining and end of the proccess. So I gave the dough a half hour before the first stretch and fold, and I gave it another stretch and fold period after the nine minutes was up.
When it came time to give the shaped loaf its 5 minute rise, I had to go out for a while and the loaf ended up rising for an hour. But, if you subtract out the time I added in for extra rising time, I could have been finished with the bread in 100 minutes. It took three hours because I stretched out the prep time on purpose.
The final bread was delicious, with a lovely crumb.
I want to try this again with a larger batch of dough made with 5 lbs. of flour. Six loaves in 100 minutes? Now that would really be something!
Tags: 100 minute challah, challah, no knead
July 20, 2009 at 8:29 am |
Wow, that’s really quick for challah. I always worry when I try to speed up the process that the bread will take on a really yeasty flavour. The crumb looks lovely.
July 20, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
Thanks Julia. The stretch and fold method is amazing for getting a nice crumb. I, too, was a bit worried, but there was no excessively yeasty flavor at all.
July 23, 2009 at 12:28 am |
Beautiful and quick challah! wow!.. this goes to position 1 in my todo list! keep posting!
July 23, 2009 at 12:50 pm |
Thanks Richa!
July 31, 2009 at 11:07 pm |
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