It's always more fun to DIY. Every week, we'll spare you a trip to the grocery store and show you how to make small batches of great foods at home.
Today: Molly Yeh from my name is yeh shares the secret to fusing two of our favorite breads: pretzels and challah.
I like my challah like I like my toothbrush: super soft and all to myself. If it's a good squishy loaf, I can eat it all in one sitting. And, please, hold the crust. It's a preference that goes way back to my summer camp days, when my friends and I would de-crust loaves and loaves of challah and devour their insides, handfuls at a time.
When I lived in New York, if I didn't have the time to make challah from scratch, I picked up a loaf of Zomick's because I love the doughy texture. Now that I live in North Dakota, I'm in the opposite scenario: no Zomick's in sight, but all the time in the world to make challah from scratch. So I've gotten much better at it in the recent weeks -- good enough to feel comfortable telling my challah to make babies with a pretzel, my second favorite bread.
And what a beautiful mix of DNA.
This bread has soft eggy sweetness on the inside and the delicious flavor of pretzel on the outside. It doesn't have a hard crust, so it is my favorite texture all around. The recipe uses lye, which is a powerful alkali that can be pretty dangerous if you don't take the proper precautions. It is way more powerful than the common household pretzel-making technique of using a baking soda bath, but I believe that this challah is absolutely worth living on the edge.
Makes six small challah loaves
1 batch of this challah dough. Do add the cardamom. Follow steps 1 to 6 and meet back here.
1/4 cup food-grade lye
5 cups cold water
Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling
Protective eyewear
Once you have made your dough and it is fully risen, divide dough into 6 equal parts. Divide each of those into 3 parts, roll them out into 1-inch ropes, and braid them together. Place on floured baking sheets and freeze for 20 to 30 minutes, or refrigerate for an hour.
As the loaves chill, put on your gloves and eyewear, and prepare the lye bath. In a casserole dish, combine the 5 cups of water and the 1/4 cup of lye. Add the lye very slowly so that it doesn't splash. Gently stir it in.
Preheat oven to 400° F.
Prepare two baking sheets with greased parchment paper. Using two spatulas or your gloved hands, carefully dip each loaf into the bath, top side down, giving the top side 10-15 seconds before placing it onto a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until loaves are golden brown and cooked through.
Enjoy with mustard and a beer or six!
See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.
Photos by Molly Yeh
Written by: molly yeh
Popular on Food52
31 Comments
food grade lye is only a few bucks on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Grade-Sodium-Hydroxide-Micro-Beads/dp/B001EDBEZM
i also read somewhere that some people use lye that they bought at hardware stores even though it wasn't specifically food grade. i'm no chemist, so i wouldn't be able to advise you on whether or not that's a good idea, but perhaps someone at the hardware store would know.
i actually read somewhere that food grade lye baths are less strong than some household cleaners... so it might be fine to pour the lye water down the drain without diluting it... but i'm afraid to try it, so i just use the diluting method.
He also made an off-hand comment about a (recent?) Alton Brown podcast on pretzels.
Sorry about that-- I should make it more clear in the recipe.
Dip the loaf into the lye water with the top side down and keep it there for 10-15 seconds. Then remove it and put it on the baking sheet, right side up. You want to try your best not to get the lye water on the bottom of the loaf because it may stick to the parchment (it's not the end of the world if some of it gets on the bottom though).
Happy baking!
Molly
See what other Food52 readers are saying.