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A Gift From My Grandmother — Love of Baking
Challah Bread with a twist
By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi
My grandmother loved baking and cooking for everyone in the family. I felt her love through food. She enjoyed cooking and enjoyed even more when we liked her cooking. She was an excellent cook, and her baking was also always magnificent.
I have some recipes from her and one of my favorite one is challah bread what I call in Hungarian: Kalács.
I called my grandma mama. Mama never measured anything she just felt what was right by experience.
The only way to get the recipe is to watch her and measure things as she was putting them together. This is how the mama style kalács was born. I been using the base recipe for a long time and I been thinking about making it my own.
I like to experiment with baking and sometimes succeed and sometimes not. This experiment happened to be a good one and I made an excellent kalács yesterday. I used my grandmother’s base recipe with some changes.
Kalács is a little complex. It needs to rise the total of three times.
Mama’s base recipe uses 1 kg flour, 6 dl of warm milk, 1 egg plus one for the top of the kalács, 5 spoonful of sugar, 1 and ½ spoonful of yeast, 2 spoonful of butter. The first spoonful of butter used with the initial mix the second after the first rise with the second mix.
Instructions: Mix yeast with sugar and some warm milk together and let it sit for about 5 minutes. When yeast is ready mix everything together. Let it raise until it doubles about 30 minutes. Rework the kalács dough again with the second teaspoonful of butter, let it double again. The next step is dividing the dough into 3 equal parts make a long strip of it then braid the 3 strips together. Fold the ends under. Let it rise one more time until doubles about 30 minutes in a warm place. Once it is done cover it with the egg and milk mix then bake for about 30 minutes in 350 F. The outcome is delicious kalács. You can add a sprinkle of poppy seed on top before baking it.
