Challah's Secret Ingredient

The star of New Year's Eve dinner turned out to be a huge loaf of challah that my cousin Monica and I baked together. It turns out the best bread machine is an eight year old with excessive amounts of energy. She helped pour flour as I was making the dough so I could keep my hands in the dough at all times, and then helped me knead the dough for much longer than I normally would have done. I credit her with the success because I think the longer kneading really helped develop the interior of the bread so that it was springy and delicate.

It's fun baking with kids because they're so curious. She was amazed that a ball of dough smaller than her head could turn into something the size of a soccer ball overnight (risen in the fridge), and then into a braided edible loaf of bread almost too big for her to hold. Since she helped so much, she got to have the first bite out of the oven. That's why the right edge of the challah wasn't photographed.

I used a recipe from The New Joy of Cooking posted on recipelink.com. It comes with clear instructions for braiding a four-strand loaf. There's a diagram, but being the kind of person I am I found the written instructions much more easy to follow. The bread was much better than bread machine challah I've made in the past, and tasted eggy and buttery despite not using much of either. Everyone was shocked when I told them it was Monica's doing, not something I'd purchased in SF and brought to LA.