Challah bread ups your morning toast game
Avocado & Egg Toast | Overnight Crème Brûlée French Toast
There aren’t many things better than the smell of warm bread baking in the oven. Well except for eating that warm bread with a big slab of melty butter smeared on top. Bread is one of the world’s oldest foods. In fact, Egyptians were buried with loaves of bread to provide sustenance in the afterlife. (Hmm, perhaps one can live by bread alone.) Most of us probably remember our moms or grandmas baking bread; and depending on your age, you may remember bread machines being a big trend in the 90s. But chances are you may have never made your own bread. Well, now is the time. Baking bread has been extremely popular during the pandemic. The act of making bread with your own two hands provides the ultimate fulfillment. It’s relaxing, comforting and provides a form of creative expression. Plus, the end result is delicious and makes everyone in the house happy. I recently made my first challah bread that beyond just giving us thick slices to enjoy, lent itself to a breakfast of avocado and egg toast one morning, followed by an upscale blueberry French toast the next. (And I think my husband snuck in an afternoon BLT.)
What is Challah bread?
Challah (pronounced haa-luh with no “ch” sound) is a braided loaf of eggy, golden-colored shiny bread that is typically eaten on major Jewish holidays. Challah is similar to a brioche bread but does not have any dairy in it. It’s soft and slightly sweet from the addition of honey.
I used Lion Bread’s Original™ Challah recipe and found it to be relatively easy to mix and it only required 2-3 minutes of kneading. The recipe consists of all purpose and bread flours, yeast, water, salt, eggs, avocado oil and honey. After brushing with egg wash, I sprinkled Trader Joe’s Everything But The Bagel seasoning on one of my loaves. If the dough is too sticky, she suggests adding flour a tablespoon at a time while kneading. I ended up using almost the entire 3.5 cups of all-purpose flour. You do need to plan ahead for a total of 4-5 hours to mix, rest/rise, braid and bake. You’ll end up with two nice-sized loaves, which freeze well if needed.
Braiding was never my thing … so I was a bit challenged when it came to braiding the four-strand dough and had to watch this video over and over. Hopefully you’re a pro-braider!
Beyond the braiding, my typical apprehension with making bread has always been getting it to rise properly. Most of the year my house is not very warm, and I have cold granite counters. I usually end up preheating my oven to its minimum temperature, shutting it off and setting my bowl on the burner to get some of that residual heat from the oven. But you have to be careful that it’s not too warm. I remember my mom opening the oven door and placing the bowl covered in plastic wrap on the door of the oven.
Today there are gourmet steam ovens and ovens with proofing settings to guarantee a perfect rise on your bread. I’ve been researching ovens recently and been looking at convection ovens that include a steaming feature. My sister’s oven has a proofing feature, which typically is associated with the final rise that happens after you shape the dough, just before baking. The Raisenne Dough Riser electric dough riser on the Food52 site is intriguing as well. Built-in printed heating circuits deliver a “picture-perfect proof” every time, regardless of ambient temperature or humidity. You just plug it in and set your covered bowl on top and they say it gets the job done in half the time.
Okay, back to eating the challah bread.
Avocado and egg toasts
We enjoyed our first slices of challah warm with butter. And for breakfast one day I toasted thick slices and topped one with medium-boiled eggs and salt and pepper; and the other with avocado slices, red pepper flakes and more Everything But The Bagel seasoning. Simple perfection. Of course there was a generous amount of butter underneath.
Overnight Crème Brûlée French Toast
The next day I made the Overnight Crème Brûlée French Toast with blueberry compote from One Tin Bakes (page 136-137), which I had just picked up from the library. This book is going on my to-buy list. It’s full of easy cakes, bars & cookies, pies, tarts, breads and more — all baked in a 9x13 tin. I used my left over challah bread instead of brioche, halved the recipe and baked it in an 8x8” tin. You can see I topped the toast with blueberry compote and maple syrup. Whip cream, crème fraîche or mascarpone would be yummy on top.
More bread to make
On my list is to make more challah bread this week. I’m liking the looks of using challah in this Make-Ahead “Ham and Cheese” Breakfast Casserole for Easter brunch. It’s a new-and-improved version of the “Sausage Egg Casserole” that my family (and chances are yours) has made for years for holiday breakfasts. The fancy recipe uses day-old cubed challah bread, pancetta instead of sausage and Gruyère for the cheddar. I think I’ll use chunks of ham instead of the pancetta. The yummy sounding part is the caramelized onions that add a smidge of sweetness, which I’m definitely including.
And if you can’t get enough bread, I recommend Pieceworks Bread Head Puzzle.
Just for fun, because I love the immortal storybook character, Madeline and these words: “We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all we love each other.”