Friday, July 17, 2009

No-Knead Challah

One of my first memories of cooking that ended in utter failure was making french toast. I was in elementary school and had scaled down a recipe to make a smaller batch. Under the salt quantity, I had merely written "1/8." Now, at this stage in my life and culinary experience, it did not occur to me that 1/8 of a teaspoon was a likely amount of salt for french toast batter. Instead, I put in 1/8 cup. Whoops. I didn't realize the mistake until serving time. I was so excited because, visually, everything looked delicious. I was so proud of my creation! Then, we all took a bite. And that was all we took. My brother tried giving his piece to our beloved dog who ate everything. Well, almost everything. The dog tried one bite then proceeded to drink his entire water supply.

Anyway, we still like french toast. My dad recently told me he read the challah makes the best french toast, but he had never heard of it. I used to work at a bakery that made challah on rotation, but had never tried it for french toast. So, I decided to bake a loaf to bring with for my visit this weekend to make french toast for brunch!

I am a big fan of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I'm guessing that most everybody is familiar with the method, and if you're not, I highly recommend popping over to their website to check it out. I made a half batch of their challah dough and make half into their strawberry danish recently feature on the website and the other half into a braided loaf. Compared to the other wet, no-knead doughs, this one was so easy with which to work! I was very pleased with how the loaf turned out. It smelled wonderful, but I didn't even taste it! I wanted to save it for french toast... more to come...


Upcoming posts: shredded chicken tacos, easy peanut butter brownies, and pesto!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Two for two! You go girl! Did I just say that? Yeah, I did.

Ms. Stewart if you're Crafty... said...

Hey there...

Where can I get that handy dandy no-knead basic bread dough recipe???