Challah

Challah oh Challah, have I made a match for you!

That outburst was dedicated to my mother.

To make up for the utter laziness of last week's blog, I've made the most time consuming thing I know how to. Challah.



Ingredients:
1 1/4 Cups Warm Water
1 1/2 Tsp Yeast
1/4 Cup Honey (or more if you like your Challah on the sweet side)
2 Tb Vegetable Oil
1 1/2 Tsp Salt
2 Eggs
4 Cups Flour
1 More Egg for Egg Wash (Preferably a lucky double yolk one!)

Combine all ingredients except 1 egg. Cover with cling wrap and let rise 1 1/2 Hours. Drop it on a floured surface and smack it around a little. Cut into 6 pieces and braid as shown in the video (or for ease, just braid like hair. But you won't feel nearly as smug afterwards.) Let rise another hour. Cover in egg wash and bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. When you knock on it, it should sound hollow.

Hope your Challah doesn't blow up.

Eat!

Biscuit Battle Concludes! "Joy" Biscuits

I still have more buttermilk left, and I swear I will USE IT ALL!!!

This biscuit recipe is from "The Joy of Cooking." You'd think Irma would be the authority on Biscuits. I actually do not own the book (shame on me), and found this recipe at Hilah Cooking. She gets drunk in the episode. Too hilarious. Here's my shot at Irma's biscuits.



ALTON'S THE WINNER! Of course a Southern boy would win out the biscuit battle. And I still have buttermilk left... now what?

In case you like your biscuits on the drier, cloudier side, here's...

Irma's Biscuits - Ingredients:
1 3/4 Cup Flour
1 Tb Baking Powder
A sprinkle of salt
5 Tb Buttah
3/4 Cup Buttahmilk

Mix it together. Cut it. Bake it at 450 for 12 minutes. Eat.

Drop Biscuits

As I mentioned in my Buttermilk Biscuit post, I had to buy about a half gallon of buttermilk. That's all they had. And I only needed a cup for Alton's recipe. The only thing that can remedy this? Have a Biscuit-off. I'm going to try to find as many Biscuit recipes as I can and try to make them all before the buttermilk goes bad. Or I die of a heart attack and diabetic coma.

This recipe is from the book "The Complete America's Test Kitchen Cookbook." Huge title, huge book... I'm addicted to it. I've been reading it like a novel. It's a problem.



While I was filming I couldn't decide which one I liked best, but afterwards Steve brought up a good point. These biscuits are great by themselves - they have so much butter in them that you don't need to top them with anything. But if you want to spread things on them, the others are better. These also are more like dumplings than biscuits, and I feel like for something to be a "biscuit" and not just a "roll," it has to have horizontal flakes that kinda peel into one another. So Alton, I apologize for ever doubting you.

1st Place: Alton's Recipe
2nd Place: America's Test Kitchen's Recipe
1489082349809809857489th Place: Those crappy ass biscuits I made the first time.

Ingredients:
2 Cups Flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Sugar
3/4 Ts Salt
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1 Cup Buttahmilk, cold
1 Stick of Buttah, melted, plus more to paint on later.

Preheat oven to 475.

Sift dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, cold Buttahmilk and hot Buttah until little clumpies form - I think it's just the butter re-cooling and solidifying. Whatever it is, it's good. Mix wet and dry ingredients together, but don't overmix.

"Drop" the biscuits onto a cookie sheet with an ice cream scoop (The recipe actually says with a quarter cup, but that seems unnecessarily difficult.) Bake for 14 minutes, paint on some butter, and let cool for five more minutes. Try not to stuff more than three in your mouth at a time.

Buttermilk Biscuits

The last biscuits sucked. Do not believe what I said at the end of the video, they were bad. Dry, yellow, bluch, yucky, and pheh. Distraught and lost with not a friend in the world, I turned to my savior, Alton Brown. And he saved me. Oh, dear, did he save me.



Ingredients:
2 Cups Flour
4 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 Baking Soda
3/4 Teaspoons Salt
2 Tb Buttah
2 Tb Shortenin'
1 Cup Buttahmilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, mix stuff together, roll it out, cut it into rounds, cook for 15 minutes, thank the heavens that Alton Brown was put on this earth.

---

Now I have a jug of buttermilk in the fridge, so I think another Biscuit recipe is in order. Again, this was delicious. The outside was crispy, the inside was a pillowy cloud of delicious... but I have no idea what to do with my jug of buttermilk. So, soon (before June 7th, as that's when the milk expires...) I'm going to try America's Test Kitchen's version. And it'll be a battle to the death. Or to the pain. Five points to anyone who gets that reference.

If anyone has another recipe for me to try, gimme gimme!

Biscuits

Ok, so I'm trying a new format, and here's my master plan - I'm actually going to TELL YOU what I'm doing. Yea, I guess I was just lazy before or surprised when recipes came out well, so didn't bother to tell you what I was doing out of embarrassment. So here is me making Biscuits!



Recipe:
2 Cups Flour (plus more for the table)
2 tsp Baking Soda (supposed to be Powder. Woops.)
1/2 tsp Salt
4 Tb Shortening
3/4 Cup Milk (plus more for painting)

Hardware: A bowl, a sifter, a spoon, a silpat, a baking sheet, your grubby little paws.