secrets of challah

[msmidge]

Now that I have had two challah coaching sessions, I think I may have figured out why my challah always fails. In the first session, I learned that I wasn't kneading the dough long enough, and that the kneading does something magical to the glutens to make the dough rise properly. In this last session, we learned by trial and error that you must never under any circumstances use all-purpose flour instead of high-gluten/bread flour. All-purpose flour yields a big, sticky, gross-looking blob of dough that you can't shape or braid, because when you try to roll out each strand it's too elastic and snaps back into a blob no matter what you do. High-gluten flour makes a nice snake that you can braid.

So now that I know these secrets, maybe sometime I will be brave enough to make challah without a coach.