Whole Grain Challah with Cranberries and Orange Zest

I did it! I actually made the Bread for the Challenge before it was due. I hope anyone visiting this site from the Bread Group enjoys my pics. I started off with two buckets of flour - one whole wheat and one white flour and one empty bucket to mix in. Then after adding the dry ingredients I got this:

Very fragrant and colorful. I then added all the wet ingredients and ended up with a bucket of dough that I let rise 2 hours. It started like this:

And rose this much. Don't look to closely at the bottom of the bucket - I never seem to get all the flour incorporated. Oh well, it still works. Also don't look at the counters. This is now how my whole kitchen looks all the time - flour everywhere.

I put it in the fridge for awhile and then later made the Challah. I rolled out a 1 pound piece and it was about 5 feet long. I think next time I would take smaller peices and roll out the 3 pieces to braid individually. It braided pretty easily into this (I can't remember if this picture was before it rose again or not.):

After baking, the house smelled wonderful. The orange flavor was really strong. It is really like a bread (not a pastry) which I like because my kids love it and I love it because there isn't any sugar besides honey. I didn't put the egg wash nor the sugar on top as the recipe called for. We sliced and ate it Saturday as we rushed out the door. I also like that it has whole wheat and wheat germ and cranberries. It is a great way to help my kids eat more healthy.

But just so you don't get the wrong idea about us - we do like our sugar and so I made some of the dough into Cinnamon Rolls. I eventually make all of the different breads into cinnamon rolls. I just take a chunk, roll it out, throw brown sugar and cinnamon on top, roll up, slice, rise and bake. This picture is what they looked like after I let them rise and before baking. Of course we ate them before I could take the final after picture. I am going to have to get faster at taking pictures or at least learn how to take a picture while eating.

Happy baking!

As one more note - The recipe makes a lot of dough. I used the dough that was left and baked it in a loaf pan. It too was eaten before a picture could be taken and it too was delicious!

Bread Braid Challenge

I joined a bread group that is going to be baking its way through the HBin5 Book, but that starts in January. To warm up though, the authors have given us a few recipes to try in the meantime. The first one was Pumpkin Brioche. I didn't make it in time to add my link to the Bread Group site but wow this was delicious! I made it in a loaf, I made it freeform, I made it into cinnamon rolls. And they were all eagerly devoured. In fact we ate them before I could even take pictures.

So now the next recipe is out: Whole Grain Challah with Cranberries and Orange Zest. I thought if I posted that I was going to make this that I would actually make it in time to add the Bread Group site. It looks delicious - much better than the Butter Braids my son's soccer team was trying to sell - I mean those are probably delicious but you have no idea what is in them and they definitely do not use whole grain.

So here it goes - I will post an update soon (as if anyone is actually reading this besides me- haha.).