From the Oven

Sourdough Challah

Starter Ingredients
50g Liquid Levain (100% hydration, but anything around that will do)
122g Flour
138g Water

Final Dough Ingredients
310g (All) Liquid Starter
300g Bread Flour
34g Vegetable Oil
34g Unrefined Sugar (Palm sugar, Canela, Demerara, etc. I used dark Palm sugar)
10g Salt
2 Egg Yolks
1 Whole Egg

Starter fermented at 75-80 degrees for about 6 hours or until it is very active. Add to it all of the other ingredients and mix until a shaggy dough is formed, let rest for 20 mins.
Kneed dough until silky and smooth, about 5-10 mins. Place into a lightly oiled bowl and let rise for about 4 hours or until doubled.

Punch down dough and divide into 3, 4, or 6 pieces, according to how many strands you are braiding. Let rest for 20 mins.

Form pieces into tapering strands, braid. (Plenty of good braiding videos on youtube). Once braided, use reserved egg whites to glaze the bread. Let sit until bread about doubles in size, about 2 hours, re-glazing at 1 hour intervals.

Sprinkle sesame seeds over bread and bake in a 375F oven until dark chestnut color is reached, about 25 mins.

I love how this bread turned out, for quite some time I had been tweaking with recipes for a sourdough challah that just tasted right, and in the process converted many different recipes to different forms of sourdough. After looking at the “Baguette Redux” recipe from Local Breads I realized that the proportion of 130% hydration starter to flour would be exactly the same, once converted, to one of my favorite recipes for yeasted challah, from Wild Yeast Blog. Trying it out, I also replaced the honey in the original recipe with dark palm sugar, as I feel that the challah benefits from the buttery flavor that the unrefined sugar imparts. Submitted To Yeastspotting (http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/)

Happy Baking!