I have been dreaming of Challah for a while now and after reviewing Rose’s recipe I decided to experiment based upon my pizza recipe. This is what I did…
10 oz Yukon gold potato peeled and cubed
cook potato 20 minutes covered in 2 cups water
puree the potato and its cooking water
add 1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/3 cup honey
2 cups flour
Beat at high speed until blended and drizzle in 1 cube melted butter while beating
I added enough more flour to make a quite stiff dough.
I let it rise to double twice then patted it out flat by hand cut it into three pieces and braided it into a giant loaf. I made a ring of parchment paper to encourage upward growth and baked convection at 390 fahrenheit for 30 minutes.
It was a great success! The crumb was very light and delicate. It had that lovely pull apart in strands that I associate with good Challah and the crust was a lovely golden brown. When I do this recipe again I think I will reduce the amount of potato by 1/3. Increase the salt by 1/2 tsp. and Increase the butter by 1/2 cube. I was a little alarmed by how quickly it browned so next time I think I will bake conventional instead of convection and I will probably lower the baking temp 10 degrees.
