Challah back!

Holla! I finally made some challah! Is that joke super old? A-yup. I'll stop.

Active prep time: 20-30 minutes
Passive (waiting) prep time: 2.5 hours
Bake time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients [Makes 2 braided loaves]
2.5 cups warm water (110 F)
2 tsp instant yeast (or 1 Tbsp active dry)
0.75 cups honey
4 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg, 3 egg yolks, and 1 more whole egg for brushing on at the end
1.5 Tbsp salt
8 cups flour

Procedure

Put the water into a large bowl (or a KitchenAid stand mixer if you have one). Sprinkle the yeast into the water (you can technically skip this proofing part if you're using instant yeast, but I don't think it makes a difference so I'll include it here in case you're using active dry yeast instead). Beat in honey, oil, 1 egg, the egg yolks, and the salt until thoroughly mixed. You might have kind of a frothy mixture at this point but that's OK.

Beat in one cup of flour at a time (waiting for it to mix in thoroughly before continuing). If you're using an electric hand mixer (or a whisk---jeez, I don't envy you if you're doing this without the aid of kitchen power tools), you'll want to switch to kneading when you've added enough flour that you have a thick dough. If you're using a stand mixer, just beat it with the dough hook to begin with and you don't really have to worry about it.

Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, until you have a soft, thick dough that is no more than a tiny bit sticky. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest until the dough about doubles in size (about 1.5-2 hours in my experience, but this will depend on the temperature in the room and the activeness of the yeast, so just start checking the dough every half hour after the first hour has gone by; if you're too busy to be that attentive, you'll probably be fine even if it over-proofs slightly). 

NB: You may want to grease or flour up a bowl and let the dough rest in there, as I found that putting it in a bowl without those precautions resulted in some extra work in scraping sticky dough off a bowl.

...

OK, now that the dough has doubled, punch it down in the bowl, and turn it over onto a pretty floury surface. Split it into two halves (one for each loaf) and knead each one for a few minutes. Add flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to your hands, but don't go overboard. 

Now the most fun part! If you want to do the traditional braided type loaf, start by splitting each half into thirds (more or less), and making each piece into a long snake about 2 inches in diameter. 

Squish the (let's say right) ends of the three snakes together firmly, and braid them. Squish the open ends (left, in this case) together when you're done.

NB: Some people like the circular style loaf. You can achieve that by braiding the strands together and then squishing the ends of your loaf together into a sort of braided bagel shape.

Place the loaves on a well-greased baking sheet. Once again, cover with a damp towel and allow it to rest for an hour.

 

NB: Unless you don't mind your loaves sort of melding into one, be sure to give them a good amount of space when you let them rise! Oops. 

...

So, now you have fat, squishy braids ready to be baked! Preheat the oven to 375F. Beat an egg and brush generously onto the loaves, coating every surface as best you can. This will give the bread that nice glazed, shiny, and browned surface that you probably associate with challah.

Bake at 375F for about 40 minutes, until the bread is browned and you can flip it over and thump the bottom and hear a nice hollow thud. Personally, I like challah much less if it's kind of overbaked and dense, so if this is important to you, I'd start checking every 5 minutes after it's been in the oven for 30 minutes, because it would be a shame to waste such a potentially delicious bread by making it gross.

When it's done, let it cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before cutting into it (to avoid crumbliness or squashed bread, etc.). Voila!

Some more notes

• If you object to slightly stale challah, and you aren't having lots of company, I recommend halving the recipe and just making a single loaf. I'm not totally sure why I made two---probably because the recipe I adapted this from called for two and I wasn't in the mood to do simple division. Also, you may want to freeze it after the first day or two of sitting out and just make toast with it. I noticed it tasted a little more stale already on the second day.
• Speaking of toast and too much challah... you can also make challah french toast. But that's a recipe for another time, so you'll have to look that up on your own.
• I noticed it wasn't as flaky on the inside as challah usually is. Check back for a follow-up challah experiment to see if I figure out why.
• Source: adapted from this recipe.