Sweet Acorn Squash and Raisin Challah

Modified from Joan Nathan’s Berches recipe from The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. This recipe makes 2 large loaves.

• 1 pound (4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 pound  (4 cups) whole wheat flour (I used Cayuga Pure Organics whole wheat bread flour)
• 2 packages dry yeast
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• About 3 cups roasted, mashed acorn squash puree (still lukewarm); you can substitute use any winter squash for the acorn squash. I’m sure you can even use canned pumpkin in a bind!
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup (or to taste) raisins
• Poppy or sesame seeds

1. Mix the flours together in a large bowl, and make a deep hole in the middle of the bowl by moving the flour towards the edges of the bowl. Pour in the yeast and 1/2 cup of water into the well. Add a small amount of the flour, about 3 tablespoons, and mix to make a very watery sludge. Cover and place in a lukewarm place until doubled in size, about 30 minutes – it will be very fizzy when ready.
2. Add the squash, salt, and more lukewarm water if needed [I didn't need any]. Knead the dough about 10-12 minutes, until it is as firm as possible. I did this in a stand mixer with the dough hook. Add cinnamon and raisins while kneading. Put the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a cloth. Place in a medium-warm, draft-free spot, and let stand until the dough has doubled in size (about 3-5 hours; with this late summer heat in NYC today, I didn’t need much longer than 2.5 hours). [Joan notes that if you are serving on Friday, you can start the dough Thursday night at 8 O'Clock, and it can rise slowly overnight.]
3. When the dough is ready, place it on a floured wooden board and split it into 4 parts. Place 2 of the parts into the bowl the dough was in, and cover. Split the other 2 parts in half so there are 4 equal parts; roll these into long logs of equal length.
4. Shape into braided round challah. I have included detailed pictures below, but Tina Wasserman’s video is pretty great – she shows 3 different ways to make round Rosh Hashanah challah. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you flip it over after you braid it – so it will look much neater after that final step! After the challah is shaped, place on baking sheet pan lined with parchment, and cover with a kitchen cloth.
5. Repeat with the other parts. Cover the challah and let rise once more for about 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to 350F.
7. When ready to bake, brush with olive oil or egg wash and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds; I used poppy seeds and cinnamon and sugar.
8. Bake 45 minutes to an hour or until the challah is nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped.

How to Braid a Round Challah, In Pictures:

This recipe is included in this “Rosh Hashanah Blog Carnival”, a list of links to seasonal recipes from like-minded bloggers compiled by Lisa at Real Food Digest.  Her blog is an incredible resource for whole-food, minimally processed recipes.

Similar Posts

• Moroccan Carrot Cumin Salad
• 3 Salads for a Beach Picnic
• Stuff it! (Another thing to do with zucchini)
• Letting the Vegetables Shine
• Can Jam May: Spicy Pickled Asparagus

Challah, the braided bread served on Shabbat and most holidays, is delicious, and typically made with many eggs.  We had vegan guests over for Shabbat last weekend, so eggs were out.   I had to learn how to make an eggless challah, and fast, so I turned to Joan Nathan, the Guru of Jewish cooking, and modified a recipe she had for berches.  I had never heard of berches before, so I asked my German grandmother about it.  She explained that berches is just the German word for challah.  Joan Nathan’s recipe is made with potatoes, but according to my grandma, berches can be made with or without potatoes.  How about sweet potatoes?  Well that’s what I had from our CSA, so that’s what was going into my challah.  The sweet potatoes lent a nice sweetness and a beautiful orange hue to the final challah, and everyone loved it… it also made for some killer paninis (see previous post).   Does anyone else have any experience with berches?  Feel free to share in the comments below.

Sweet Potato Berches

Modified from Joan Nathan’s The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. This recipe makes 2 large loaves.

• 2 pounds bread or unbleached all-purpose flour (8 cups)
• 2 packages dry yeast
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• About 3 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (still lukewarm)
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• Poppy or sesame seeds

1. Place the flour in a large bowl, making a well in the middle. Stir in the yeast and 1/2 cup water. Add to the well a small amount of the flour, about 3 tablespoons. Cover and place in a lukewarm place until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.
2. Add the potatoes, salt, and more lukewarm water if needed [I didn't need any]. Knead the dough about 10-12 minutes, until it is as firm as possible. [I had to add more flour--about 1/4 cup--since the dough was mad sticky.] Put the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a cloth. Place in a medium-warm, draft-free spot, and let stand until the dough has doubled in size (about 3-5 hours). [Joan notes that if you are serving on Friday, you can start the dough Thursday night at 8 O'Clock, and it can rise slowly overnight.]
3. When the dough is ready, place it on a floured wooden board and split it into 4 parts. Make a long loaf of one of the parts [mine was more of an oblong round...], and divide one other part into 3 pieces. Roll the 3 peices into long ropes and braid them. Place the braid on top of the long loaf, pinching on the edges to attach. Repeat with the other 2 parts. Cover the challah and let rise once more for about 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 350F with a pizza stone inside, if you have one.
5. When ready to bake, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds.
6. Bake 45 minutes to an hour or until the challah is nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped.

Similar Posts

• Sweet Challah for a Sweet New Year!
• Invest a little time, make a lot of dough
• Chocolate Almond Anise Biscotti
• Grilled Pizza
• Chanukah Latkes

Making bread and pizza at home is all about planning. Once you’ve got the timing right, it requires very little active work.  I hadn’t made bread at home in over a month since we had been out of town, and well ya know,  summer… but when I saw artisanal multigrain loaves in the store selling for close to $5, I had a sudden burst of inspiration (funny how that works huh?).

Sunday is our day to prep our week’s food, and my contribution was one loaf of multigrain whole wheat bread, and dough for two large pizza pies to be eaten at a later date.  Sounds like a lot of work, but all this took roughly 15 minutes of actual work and about two and a half hours of listening for timers to ring and making decisions.   The only semi-technical part is feeling for when the dough is right, but the following two recipes should give you dough that is easy to handle and elastic, not wet and tacky.

Sunday Morning: Soaked the (Multi)Grains

When I woke up, I started soaking some grains that would be added to both the bread and pizza dough.  Uncooked grains add wonderful texture to bread, but they need to soak for a while, so it’s important to get that started early.  The grains I used were a small handful each of:

• Millet
• Oats
• Flaxseed Meal
• Coarse Cornmeal

I put those in a small bowl and added enough water to go about an inch over the grains, then I covered the bowl with a plate.    Ideally you want to soak the grains overnight, but I forgot.  We went out for about five hours, and when I got home and started on the dough the millet was still a little on the crunchy side but I used  it anyway and I ended up really liking the extra texture.

Sunday Late Afternoon: Started the Multigrain Whole Wheat Loaf

• 6 ounces white flour (about 1.5 cups)
• 10 ounces whole wheat flour (about 2 cups)
• 1.5 cups grain mixture (see above)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp active yeast
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4-1 1/2 cups of water

In a food processor fitted with the blade attachment (a la Bittman), add all the dry ingredients and mix for about 30 seconds.  Add the grain mixture and the olive oil, and with the food processor running, start pouring in the water.  Because there is a lot of water in the grains, the amount of water you need to add will vary, so add it slowly until a dough ball forms and starts moving around in the chamber.  I added about 3/4 cup.

Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead for just a few seconds.  Form it into a bowl, and let it rise in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap until it doubles (1-2 hours).  Our kitchen was HOT, so after about 45 minutes it had risen plenty.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface again and let it sit covered with plastic wrap for about 20 minutes.

Dusting with flour as needed, shape the dough into a flat rectangle the width of your loaf pan.   Roll up the dough and place it in the oiled pan seam side down.  Dust with flour and cover with plastic wrap and let it double again (1-2 hours).  (This is a great time to put about 5-7 minutes of work into making the pizza dough.  See below.)

If you want seeded bread: scramble an egg and brush it on the top of the loaf, sprinkle on the seed mixture of your choice (I used sesame seeds and rolled oats).

Slash with a sharp knife or lame, and put it in the center rack of your oven.  After about 20 minutes rotate the pan for even cooking.  It should cook for about 40 minutes or until it has a nice golden brown crust that gives a good thud when knocked with the back of a chef’s knife.  Remove from pan and cool on a cooling rack.

We’ve been having this as toast for breakfast, I made an egg and cheese with it this morning, and it was also a great accompaniment to Tuesday’s ratatouille (see previous post).  Not bad considering the ingredients used cost about $0.40.

Sunday After the Bread Was Shaped: Made The Multigrain Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (enough for 2 large pies)

Equipment note: Pizza does require some special equipment, most importantly a pizza stone, followed closely by a pizza peel (the huge wooden pizza spatula that is oh so fun to use) and finally a pizza slicer (also fun).  I strongly suggest you invest in at least the stone and peel, especially if you’re interested in making artisanal bread (not in a loaf pan) as the hot preheated stone is what gives you a super crust, and you can’t really get that without it.   You can find this equipment and more on our amazon store (CLICK HERE), and yes, your purchases do help us keep our site running, so thank you.

• 10 ounces of white flour
• 12 ounces of whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup soaked uncooked grains (see above)
• 3 Tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1-1 1/2 cups water

Follow the exact same procedure as for the sandwich loaf above.  After the dough has risen the first time, split it into as many pies as you’d like to make, and either start flattening them out into a pie, or do what I did and wrap each dough ball with plastic wrap, put it in a freezer bag, and throw it in the freezer until you’re ready to use it.  The morning that you’ll be making the pizza, just take the dough out of the freezer and put it in the fridge.

Wednesday after work: Made a Delicious Pizza

Making the actual pizza is a snap:  Preheat the oven to 500 F with the pizza stone in the center of the oven.  On a cornmeal (or flour) dusted pizza peel, pat, roll or toss the dough until you’ve worked it into a pie as thick or as thin as you’d like.  Add your toppings, and slide it onto a pizza stone that has been heating in a 500 degree oven.  Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the crust is just browning.  Let it rest for a couple of minutes before slicing.

We turned one of the frozen dough balls into a fantastic pizza with leftover tomato sauce from the ratatouille, slow roasted red onions, Bulgarian feta and anchovies, drizzled with a balsamic reduction.  It was super supper.

Similar Posts

• A Sourdough Starter: Success?
• Rye Berries for Breakfast
• Sweet Challah for a Sweet New Year!
• In a New York State of Black Bean Burger
• Chocolate Almond Anise Biscotti

I admit, this is not exactly the simple, no fuss recipe you have come to expect from Sustainable Pantry, but this is a starting point, you can be sure there will be simpler sourdough recipes to come.

This recipe is from Local Breads by Daniel Leader, the founder of Bread Alone.

Sourdough Batards (fat baguettes) from Local Breads (modified slightly)

• 350 grams (2 1/4 cups) of bread flour (I ALWAYS use King Arthur’s)
• 120 grams ( 3/4 cup) whole wheat flour (I used organic stone-ground)
• 30 grams (1/4 cup) of rye flour (I used organic)
• 125 grams of sourdough starter (size of a tennis ball)
  
• 1.5 tsp of kosher salt
• 1.5 cups of water (I used room temperature spring water)

Mix the flour and the water and let it soak for 20 minutes (this gives the flour time to absorb the water). Then mix in the starter and salt.

It will be quite sticky, and difficult to handle, but keep at it.  Eventually it will turn smooth and not so sticky.  It took me about 20 minutes to get to the 5th picture below. (if you don’t want to knead, check out one of these other delicious bread recipes)

In Local Breads, he has a trick to tell if your dough has been kneaded enough: Pinch off a piece the size of a golf ball, and gently stretch it. If you can get it thin enough to see through without tearing it, it’s ready!  Our dough kept tearing, but it came really close, and in the end it still worked out.

Once the dough is ready, put it into an oiled container and let it rise at room temperature for an hour. Give the yeast some time to feed, you won’t see much rising yet (we didn’t).

After an Hour:

Turn the dough: this is a common step that is done part way into the dough rising. Pat the dough into a rectangle and fold it like a business letter. The top comes down to the bottom third, and the bottom comes up to cover it. Then put it back in the container seam side down, and let it rise again for 2-3 hours, this rose for another 2:45:

The dough is now ready to be shaped. You can make any shape, but I followed the book‘s lead and made Batards, a shorter, fatter baguette.  To do this, cut the dough in half with either a knife or a bench scraper.  Next pat the dough into a flat rectangle about 5 inches wide, and 3 long. Then fold the top edge in towards the center, closing the seal gently with the heel of your hand. Then, fold the bottom half up to the center, so they overlap with about an inch and again seal the seam. And finally, fold it in half the long way so you have a skinny log.

Next, you again seal it with your palm, being careful not to flatten the dough in the process.  And then roll it out like a Play-Doh Snake, only its not Play-Doh, it Sour-Doh!  Put a little extra pressure as you move your hands out to the edge to create the pointier edges of the Batard.

We’re almost there!

Now the dough rises for another 1-2 hours, on a couche (a canvas cloth that cradles baguettes or other shapes as they rise, and allows them to keep their shape), I used parchment paper on a baguette pan, but you could also roll up kitchen towels and slide them under the parchment between the batards to cradle them.  Dust the tops with a little flour, and cover with plastic wrap while they rise.

Slash 3 inch slashes in the top with a very sharp knife or lame dipped in water.  And they’re ready for that 450 degree oven that’s been preheating with the baking stone in the middle rack, and a skillet in the bottom.

Into the oven it goes, along with a few ice cubes into the skillet to create steam, which is the makings for a heckuva crust.  Let it cook for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 400 and cook for another 20-25 or until the crust is gorgeously brown.  And that’s it!

This came out great!  I could have slashed deeper to get a nicer shape, but the crust was so good, and there were some real sour undertones!

If you are even considering attempting this recipe, I strongly recommend picking up Local Breads by Daniel Leader.  Along with this recipe and a ton of others, it has a wealth of baking tips, instructions on making your own starter, and some beautiful pictures.

While this seems somewhat involved, it’s actually not.  Like most breadmaking, it requires only a few minutes of work every couple of hours.  Most of the time is spent waiting for the next step.  So as long as you’re going to be around the house for the better part of the day, you can make a DELICIOUS bread with minimal effort. (blogging the experience, well that’s another story!)

Similar Posts

• A Sourdough Starter: Success?
• Invest a little time, make a lot of dough
• Grilled Pizza
• Garam Masala Almonds
• Rye Berries for Breakfast

The method came from Mike at SourdoughHome.com, by way of Jonathan and it was very simple (thanks guys!):

Mix 1/4 cup of water with 3/8 cup of organic rye flour in a container, cover it loosely with plastic wrap, and feed it 1/4 cup of water and 3/8 cup of organic rye flour every 8-12 hours. That’s it!

The major indicator that the starter is healthy is that it doubles its size between feedings. After about 2 days, it started doing this consistently. It also developed a very tangy, green-apply smell, and the gas bubbles in the dough between feedings appeared to be growing bigger each day.

Day 2: Before Feeding

Day 2: Stirring in the water (note there are no bubbles)

Day 3: Stirring before feeding, notice the air pockets!

Day 3: Mixing in the water, it gets milky and lots of bubbles develop

Day 3: Marking the height

Day 4: More than doubled in size!

To prevent the dough from taking over your kitchen, Sourdough Mike recommends disposing of 1/2 of the starter following each feeding, (I’ve been throwing out 1/2 each day).

Although my starter appears healthy, Mike recommends not storing it in the fridge until it is 30 days old. So while I can start using it, I have to keep feeding it twice daily. As an insurance policy though, after today’s feeding instead of throwing 1/2 of it out, I put it in a jar and stored it in the fridge. Just in case anything happens to my pet I’ll have a clone.

It really has been like having a pet. I feed it at night before I go to sleep, and then in the morning before I leave for work and marvel at how much it has grown. Once a week I transfer the starter to a bowl while I clean out its cage, and I make sure I give it lots of love. In return, I’m hoping this baby is going to make me some tasty bread. Tomorrow it will finally be put to the test as I attempt to make a sourdough batard from Daniel Leader’s book Local Breads, stay tuned!

Similar Posts

• Sourdough from Scratch!
• Invest a little time, make a lot of dough
• Grilled Pizza
• Garam Masala Almonds
• Rye Berries for Breakfast

No-Knead Whole Grain Bread

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1/2 cup coarse cornmeal
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups water

mix up the dry ingredients, add the water and mix it until it’s a wet shag.  Then let it sit covered at room temp for 4-5 hours.

Shape it into a rectangle and put it in an oiled loaf pan.  Oil the top.  Let it sit for another hour, and then bake it at 350 for 45 minutes.

This bread is great cut into thick slices, toasted, with cream cheese or jam.  A fantastic way to start the day (I did it this morning).

Similar Posts

• Moroccan Carrot Cumin Salad
• Sweet Challah for a Sweet New Year!
• Stuff it! (Another thing to do with zucchini)
• Letting the Vegetables Shine
• Grilled Pizza

Day 3, prior to feeding

So Yesterday I fed it 2 tablespoons of water, 50 grams (1/3 cup) of bread flour, and 2 teaspoons of organic whole-wheat flour. I mixed in the water, then added the flour and incorporated it all in.

After adding the water it froths up a bit

Today I fed it the same thing. Only I made one of the cardinal errors in baking, and I hope I didn’t blow it:

You are NEVER supposed to pour something over a bowl, and what did I do? I poured the water from a gallon pitcher into a tiny tablespoon right over the bowl and too much poured out and got into the dough. I think it was just a little bit extra, and I think I compensated by adding less than the required 2 measured tablespoons, but the book says the dough won’t be smooth. Check it:

That's Smooth

We’ll see…

Similar Posts

• Sweet Challah for a Sweet New Year!
• Grilled Pizza
• HOLLA! Sweet Potato Challah
• Invest a little time, make a lot of dough
• Polenta with Summer Squash and Semi-Poached Egg

Stiff Dough Levain (Classic Sourdough Starter)

Again, this could take anywhere from 4-10 days, and aside from daily feeding and inspection, requires very little work (or so I’m told).

• 50 grams organic rye flour
• 50 grams unbleached bread flour
• 1/3 cup tepid spring water

Day 1

Method: Add the water to a medium mixing bowl and stir in the flours with a wooden spoon until a stiff dough forms. Scrape down any dough from the sides of the bowl. The dough will not be smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit for 24 hours.

If this goes according to plan, it will be the beginning of a journey through the bread-making techniques of the old world. If this fails, I may have to start making my grill cheeses on Wonderbread. Stay tuned.

Similar Posts

• Sweet Challah for a Sweet New Year!
• Grilled Pizza
• HOLLA! Sweet Potato Challah
• Invest a little time, make a lot of dough
• Sourdough from Scratch!