World Bread Day

World Bread Day is here again and Kochtopf has organized the Third Annual World Bread Day celebration. The last two roundups have been wonderful and now that I am officially a bread maker...how could I not enter.

This time of year, what would be more perfect than a festive Challah with Raisins to celebrate WBD. It's fantastic out of the oven and really easy to make thanks to my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. (You get to see a couple of other breads I made that were fantastic).

This is actually my second time making their challah. The first time I made it with melted butter and it tasted like brioche...heavenly! But somehow I couldn't get the shape right. It didn't rise like the "turban" suggested in the book or look like any of the fancy round challahs that I've bought in the past. It seemed to half unwind in the baking. So I headed over to my daughter's. She's the bread maker in the family...the one who gave me her old bread machine and got me hooked on making bread using the machine just to knead the dough and allow me to shape and bake breads in my own oven. Her round challahs always look awesome

See what I mean? Her secret?....I'm sure she won't mind if I share...she divides the dough into three portions before forming it into ropes. The first one is thicker than the rest and forms the center. the others are tucked in under the end of the previous. Somehow this works to keep the shape better.

But back to my own....this time I made the dough using canola oil instead of butter. It creates a looser dough for forming and tastes more like the egg breads I've eaten growing up. With Joanna's technique had a little better luck shape-wise. That said, different recipes...she uses a bread machine book recipe, so the chemistry, I guess is a little different.

Another view of my challahs, slightly different than Joanna or Jeff & Zoe, but pretty good, if I do say so myself.

But enough about me....you really have to check out their fantastic website, you can get a step-by-step "how to" along with photos for the challah and many other breads too. And kudos to them both for having a page with some minor corrections to the book.

And, Kochtopf....thanks for once again organizing World Bread Day. I can't wait to see the roundup.