Worth the Wait Autumn Challah
Can challah be improved upon? This enriched bread associated with family gatherings, religious celebrations, and french toast at Sunday brunch, has seen many iterations. I’ve made my way through a few recipes, always happy but never 100% satisfied.
Was this recipe worth the wait? Were the steps worth impatiently waiting through? Is the gloriousness of our brief Midwestern fall worth the wait each year? Obviously, yes. But if you need proof, read on.
Methods
Recipe Source:
Molly Yeh’s Purple Sweet Potato Challah, on Instagram
Dairy-Free Modifications:
None needed! Molly Yeh recommends eating the challah - “destroy” - with butter. It doesn’t need it. You’ll happy destroy this challah on it’s own.
Not a dairy-free modification, but as you can tell from the pictures, I did not use a purple sweet potato. I used a regular orange sweet potato, because that’s what I could find, and the color was more autumn-like to me.
Procedural Notes
This recipe involves a bit of waiting, but it is worth it!
First, the instructions suggest that you wait until your sweet potato mixture cools enough to mix the wet and dry ingredients together. However, I found that when I added cool water as instructed, it was already sufficiently cool.
Second, you have to knead the dough REALLY well. It will look mixed enough a few minutes in, but here we really need to practice our virtue of patience and let your mixer continue to knead for the recommended time. This required extra patience for me, because I had to hold my mixer nearly constantly or it would have fallen off of the counter due to all the reverberations! It was kind of nice not to be able to multi-task, for once, and just to relax as the gluten developed. It’s surprising how nicely the dough came together from being shaggy, then sticky, and finally a delightfully soft springy texture.
Third, of course, is the first rise.
Fourth, after shaping, Molly Yeh suggests being EXTRA patient and letting the dough rise for a second time overnight in the fridge. I’ve only ever done this for the first rise, so this was new to me.
Fifth, after letting the dough come back to room temperature, you need to wait again, while the bread bakes.
FINALLY, be as patient as you can be to let the challah cool a bit before TEARING in. Yes, the correct way to eat a challah is torn. Fight me. But tearing also helps you also enjoy the really nice pull this challah has, just like Molly’s video.
Results
My primary reviewer said, “this is probably the best challah I’ve ever had.”
I might agree!
Even my mom, connoisseur of challah baking, asked for this recipe upon tasting this challah!
Discussion
There is not only one way to challah, and I’m so glad I was introduced to this unique recipe! I love how Molly Yeh integrates her heritages in her food, and celebrates the joy in food. This challah is the epitome of that! Though my challah was not as striking as her pinky-purply hued challah, with the regular sweet potato, the color is a subtle, golden hue, the taste is mellow, and the texture is AMAZING. Even the crust is absolutely delicious.
This challah recipe, like so much in life, was well worth the wait to find, and worth the wait to bake.
With no modifications to this recipe required to make it dairy free, this recipe is absolutely a winner for me! I’ll happily make it again. Will you? Let me know on Instagram @dairyfreewithemily!