I look forward to it all year. It is the only thing that makes the living-inside-of-a-mouth feeling of summer and constant inconvenience of winter tolerable. And even though I know it is ALWAYS a fleeting season, this year seems to be an extreme example. No sooner did I purchase fall tights in peacock, mustard, and wine (see my sister's wedding palette ) than did the snow begin to fall. But I can barely call it snow. It is something much worse: WINTRY MIX.
Anyway, in order to get my fill of fall I visited Afton Apple Orchard and smashed it all into a one day event. The day was absolutely perfect and involved hay rides, pumpkin picking, apple donuts, hot cider, and a petting zoo. Some quality time with this llama kind of made up for the rest of the week:
And the apples seemed to be right at their peak:
I had plans to make either apple or pumpkin butter with all the goods I had collected, but after considering how long this process would actually take and weighed it out against the fact that I wanted pumpkin butter RIGHT AWAY I went ahead and purchased some in the delightful country store. It tastes like the very essence of pumpkin pie and on bread right out of the oven it is like the ambrosia of autumn.
So I set to work on baking up a couple of loaves of sweet, eggy challah. It would make more sense if this post had an apple recipe, I know. One will follow to be sure.
Challah Recipe from THE SILVER PALATE COOKBOOK - makes 2 loaves
2 cups milk
1/3 cup white sugar
1 stick plus 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 packages active dry yeast (I but mine in bulk so this equals about 9 Tbsp.)
4 eggs (room temp)
2 tsp salt
6 cups AP flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 Tbsp cold water
Bring milk, sugar, and butter to a boil. Remove mixture from heat and let it come to lukewarm for proofing your yeast. Add yeast to the mixture and wait about ten minutes until it's foamy on the top. Beat three of the eggs with the salt and add that to the milk, sugar, butter, and yeast. Add 5 cups of flour, one at a time and mix thoroughly until a sticky dough forms. Scatter 1 additional cup flour onto your work surface and knead dough until it's smooth and elastic.
Wash and dry your mixing bowl and coat the inside with an even layer of butter before plopping the dough inside. Cover the top with a damp towel and allow the dough to rise in the bowl until it has tripled in size (about 2 hours).
Punch the dough down and divide in half. Cut each half into three equal parts and roll each third into a long snake. Braid each loaf and tuck the ends underneath like so:
Mine were a little bit skinny, but on the second rise they puffed up a bit.
Cover the braided loaves with a damp towel and allow them to rise another hour or so.
Preheat oven to 350 and make an egg wash with water and one egg. Paint each loaf generously with egg wash and sprinkle with poppy seeds if you have them. I did not.
But they still turned out quite nicely:
I have one loaf left for making french toast this weekend and ate the other loaf with some potato leek soup with bacon, which did not photograph well.
Keeping these piefingers crossed for a resurrection of real fall, you know with the leaves and everything...
0 comments:
Post a Comment