Showing off my first ever challah loaves. I can make cupcakes and cookies just fine, but bread is really a hit or miss thing for me. Especially a nice soft bread like the big C. But, hope springs eternal for me. I found this simple recipe on Food. com and followed the recipe closely. Sorta. Half whole wheat and I used brown sugar.
The first braids 
Making bacon jam in the interim 
I DID NOT DESTROY IT!
I also figured out my bacon jam recipe for this year. The right stout is critical. So… guess I better mix up the main batch and get the kosher/halal & vegan versions together for shipping. Plus I have a ton of mini-Jamaican Black Cakes to make before I drink myself to death eating rum infused dried fruit. Suddenly raisins taste good to me! Better put it in a cake. How’s your Christmas cookery going? Open food & fun thread.
opiejeanne
Oh, YUM!
I’m so glad to see you here again
I converted the turkey carcass and assorted raw vegetables into stock. I’m thinking about making some dog-shaped sugar cookies for Hanukkah for my favorite neighbor, and for her birthday. Maybe tomorrow, still a few days left before the 8th day.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Holy cow. Challah and bacon jam? Send it over here!
Suzanne
They look amazing and delicious.
I have been endeavoring to eat less carb-heavy food, and I have found that I have very little taste left for sweet stuff. But just seeing bread makes me drool. We’re watching past seasons of the Great British Baking Show, and the episode on grissini breadsticks sent me straight to grab a snack. (I crossed my carbs with protein by going for pretzel chips with hummus.)
The Dangerman
Bacon be jammin…
…and got my booster jab, doncha know, mon. Johnson, same dosage as first jab. What’s up with this half dose stuff?
Martin
Bread is hit or miss for almost everyone. Unlike muffins (cakes, cookies, etc) you are reliant on this colony of living bacteria for everything to come off right, and that’s a hard variable to get consistent – especially if you are an occasional (not every day or so) bread maker.
opiejeanne
In a week or so I’ll be making at least one birthday cake (Christmas babies but all grown up now), A whole raft of cookies including sugar and Russian teacakes. For the Christmas Eve party I’ll bake an almond tart, which involves a cookie crust, heavy cream, sliced almonds, and sugar, all mixed with a little Grand Marnier. Ok, I double the amount of the booze because it’s delicious.
https://flic.kr/p/2i3yNn9
debbie
Nice looking bake!
Betty Cracker
Your challah loaves look pretty damned professional!
I don’t do a ton of baking except for the annual Drunken Aunties Cookie Night, which crams 365 days of baking into 24 hours. That’s coming up soon!
Oddly, we’ve never made gingerbread cookies at DACN. I was thinking this year it might be nice. Anyone got a reliable recipe? (Foolproof, preferably.)
Scout211
Beautiful bread! Looks yummy, too
My big bake every Christmas is two pans of sweet rolls with cinnamon rolled inside and caramel and pecan topping. Those raised sweet rolls have kept my family coming back for at least one day during the holidays. My mother taught me the recipe and I have baked those every year for more than 40 years. Raised rolls and breads are always a hit or miss thing but over the years I have switched to using the “rapid” yeast and that has seemed to work well more consistently. We also keep our house temps fairly cool in the winter to save energy so I turn the oven on to warm and then put dough in that warm oven for the risings (turned off after the initial warming) and the risings work well in the pre-warmed oven.
Scamp Dog
My paternal grandmother made these fabulous cinnamon rolls, and no one got the recipe from her, so I’ve been working on recreating a worthy successor. The current recipe is good, but my brother and I agree that our memories of 30+ years ago aren’t terribly reliable, so I’m just aiming for making great cinnamon rolls. I made a batch over Thanksgiving, which had two variations. First was a mistake: I used a 3/4 cup measure for the sugar in the dough instead of the recipe’s 1/2 cup. I had forgotten that he had a 3/4 cup measure, and the printed label had worn away. The second was a deliberate improvisation: the yeast on hand was from last year, and had expired in August. I figured it wasn’t likely to be totally dead, so I used all three packets instead of the specified single packet.
The bread part came out fabulously soft, and I’m not sure if it’s from the extra sugar or the (possibly) extra yeast. So the next batch will use 3/4 cup sugar and the usual amount of (non-expired) yeast, and I’ll be giving them to the friends that kept Meeca, my Husky, while I was out of town.
Joe Falco
Great looking bread!
I also made a bread of sorts. I made a loaf of banana bread last night using an online recipe and made a few changes. I only used two ripe bananas instead of the three it called for as two were all that I had. I substituted brown sugar for white, and, instead of a teaspoon of cinnamon, I put in a teaspoon of the mixed spice that’s used in the UK that I mixed together myself. Chopped walnuts were thrown in for good measure because why not.
Without the 3rd banana, the bread tasted more of the spice than the bananas, but it still had a pleasant taste!
snqb
OMG Cannot do this tonight but yes within the wek.
Scamp Dog
@Scout211: I’ve gotten good results by putting the rising dough into the oven with just the oven light on. The heat from the incandescent bulb is enough to warm things up nicely.
Would you be willing to share your recipe? Per my comment above (#10), I’m trying to work up a cinnamon roll recipe as a successor to my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls.
dmsilev
Challah was one of my pandemic trapped-at-home projects. Fun to do, and it makes for great French toast. Bagels was another.King Arthur is a good source of recipes for all things baking; these are the two recipes I used: Challah, Bagels
rikyrah
Oh my…they look delicious ;)
mali muso
@dmsilev: I second the KAF recipe recommendation. This recipe for a ginger pumpkin bread braid is scrumptious. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/ginger-pumpkin-braid-recipe
scav
I’ll admit to being a tad giggly over a challah + bacon combo, but they both do you honor and should be tasty.
mrmoshpotato
It’s the disappearing reappearing post!
That bread looks fantastic!
Scout211
@Scamp Dog:
I think I may have typed it all out for my daughters (who have never tried it but always say they want to). The original recipe is from the classic 1950 version of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook. It was actually re-released about 10 years ago or so. It starts with the sweet dough recipe on page 98. The cinnamon rolls recipe (using the sweet dough) is on page 100, with the butterscotch topping (caramel and pecans) further down that page.
But I use twice the amount of cinnamon/sugar for the insides of the rolls and twice the amount of caramel and nuts. The directions that I typed out for my daughters is four pages but here are the ingredients:
Sweet Dough
2 cups lukewarm milk
½ cup sugar
2 tsp salt
2 packets yeast (regular or fast acting)
Stir until yeast is dissolved.
2 eggs
½ cup soft shortening
7 to 7 ½ cups flour
Cinnamon Filling
1 ½ cups of sugar
6 tsp. Cinnamon
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
Topping
1 ½ cups unsalted butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 ½ cups coarsely chopped pecans
(topping goes in the pan first and the rolls are placed over the topping. Then when the rolls are done, you flip the pan over).
Kristine Pennington
That bread looks superb! Our German/Hungarian heritage demands we make poppy seed rolls and pfeffernusse for the holidays – and after living in Albuquerque I also make mexican wedding cookies…Christmas is about traditions!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Jamaican me hungry!
Chief Oshkosh
I gained 5 lbs just looking at the photos and reading the OP. :)
Congrats on successful challa!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I do two types of cookies every year. One is a cardamom cookie from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The other is Swedish Pepparkakor from an old family recipe. It differs from many pepparkakor recipes I have seen online in that it has cinnamon, cloves and ginger (some are more ginger focussed) and our recipe also calls for the juice and zest of one orange, and that hint of citrus with the spices along with the requisite butter, sugar and flour, makes for a magical flavor combination.
debbie
The closest I get to baking bread is baking zucchini bread.
Challah’s great for French toast, but it’s also the bread to use for bread puddings, too.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Kristine Pennington: Do you do Springerle? My Aunt usually makes those at Christmas. My mom (her sister) has mostly dropped them from the annual Christmas cookie baking binge but I’ve been lead to believe they’re a German (or at least Pennsylvania Dutch) standard.
Sure Lurkalot
My sister keeps kosher and makes challah every Friday. Yours look every bit as wonderful as hers. I tried to make them when I went to help her recover from hip replacement. She was directing me the whole way in the kitchen and suffice it to say I am not a baker.
What’s kosher/halal/vegan bacon jam?
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Bread is not as difficult as people make it out to be, or at least there are things you can do to make it more consistent. The basic idea is to do everything you can to make your production consistent. Use the same recipe and the same ingredients until you’ve mastered the one thing. Do everything by weight instead of volume*. Let the dough rise at a consistent temperature. Make sure your oven has fully preheated before baking.
Seriously, it’s not that hard. I could bake a consistent loaf of bread when I was still in elementary school. A big part of that was having a good teacher, but the elements of doing a good job just aren’t that hard.
*I can’t emphasize weighing enough. Flour is notorious for having a variable density depending on how recently it’s been sifted. And weights are just inherently a lot more precise than volumes. I work in a chemistry lab, and my kitchen scale is more precise than almost any volume measurement I use in the lab.
ruemara
@mrmoshpotato: lol, I didn’t want to bigfoot one of Anne’s posts and figured I’d save it for when you guys needed both a new thread and a bit of a break from *looks around* everything
@Sure Lurkalot: Kosher/Halal is done with turkey bacon. Vegan is done with baco bits (not a scrap of meat in them). You build the base of the jam first (balsamic sauteed onions, sugar, sweet potatoes & stout) and then add the preferred bacon in a smaller batch. My vegan and no pork friends are quite happy. Candied turkey bacon is also darned good.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: Starting with commercial-yeast recipes is also a good idea. Sourdough is great fun and makes nicely tasty bread, but it’s a whole additional set of variables to keep track of and that can be annoying while you’re getting yourself oriented.
H.E.Wolf
Betty C – Here’s my go-to ginger cookie recipe. I copied it out of a cookbook from the public library when I was just out of college. It’s on a piece of lined notebook paper, somewhat stained with molasses, with directions to my cousin’s high school graduation ceremony at the top. I’ll omit that part.
2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar (reduced from 1 cup in original recipe)
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
Mix the dry ingredients and set aside. Cream together butter, vanilla, sugar; add the egg and molasses. Add the dry ingredients gradually, to avoid a flour cloud; chill dough. Roll out on a floured surface for cookie-cutter cookies, or make small blobs and flatten them. Bake at 375 F for 7-8 minutes. Take them off the baking sheet as soon as they come out of the oven.
Brachiator
Bacon jam! Oh, my!
Everything looks so delicious.
Roger Moore
@Scamp Dog:
From my experience, yeast doesn’t go bad nearly as fast as the label says. I’ve had the same batch of yeast for something like 10 years, and it’s still going strong. A big part of that is that I mostly do sourdough, so I only use the commercial yeast once in a great while.
The key is that the yeast is alive. If even a tiny bit of it is still alive, it will multiply and grow to the amount you need. It will take a bit longer to get started, but the result will be very similar. When I do make bread with commercial yeast, I almost always use a recipe that uses only a tiny bit and counts on the yeast multiplying. Just a little pinch is enough if you have patience.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator: Yes, it really does.
Anonymous At Work
Former coworker, on the MD side of DC, had an aunt that made Black Cakes and the like. Holy Frittatas… I think there was a full bottle of 151 in each cake. I miss those, a little cuz I don’t do day-drunk, around the holidays.
Aimai
@ruemara: omg this sounds delicious! And your challah looked like perfection! I used to make it every week for Friday night—had it down to a science—but now it’s just the two of us and we don’t really eat that much bread.
You are reminding me that if I am going to make my pecan/raisin/nutmeg/brandy fruitcake I should start now. Nobody can really handle it anymore, way too alcoholic for the kids, but the smell is the smell of Christmas Eve, my grandfather’s birthday,and the whole holiday for me.
Roger Moore
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Springerle are definitely German. My mother’s side of the family are German, and she always made springerle. It’s kind of odd, because most of the family Christmas recipes came from the Jewish side of the family.
H.E.Wolf
ruemara – Spectacular challah! And thank you for this post – there has been a *lot* of [everything] today, and this is a really nice respite.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
I definitely would not recommend sourdough to anyone just getting started with bread baking. As you say, it’s a completely different world from baking with commercial yeast. I really enjoy it, but it takes a much greater level of commitment.
zhena gogolia
All that’s missing are cat pictures.
ruemara
@Aimai: One thing I don’t do is a final pour over of red wine or rum on the final cake. It’s less pudding-y but more legal for folks who don’t drink.
UncleEbeneezer
Just booked tix for the Huntington on Sunday where we will get to hang with a friend/colleague of mine who is one of the leaders on local police reform efforts. She recently took a VP job at Planned Parenthood, and has been super busy with work so I rarely get to see her anymore. Miss her alot, as we used to meet weekly and interact almost daily via phone, email etc.
Also gearing up for a week long trip to Texas for Xmas. Very much not looking forward to being and heavy Trump territory, but it will be nice to take our in-laws to a cabin out by a lake, for their first real travel outing since Covid.
Also making plans for a trip to Mammoth for my wife’s birthday in mid-January. I think we are going to do a moonlit snowshoeing trip/tour that looks pretty cool.
Sure Lurkalot
@ruemara: a nearby biscuit place makes vegan gravy and it’s wonderful.
anytime you’d like to share the jam recipe!
eta I see you shared the ingredients!
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara:Jamaican black cakes sound like the Christmas cakes Goan Christians make.
Scamp Dog
@Scout211: Thanks!
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Pepparkakor (Swedish-style Ginger Snaps)
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup light molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon alt
1 tablespoon ground ginger (or a skootch more, to taste)
½ teaspoon black pepper (or a mini-skootch more, for added spiciness)
3½ cups sifted flour
Sugar for dipping
.
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Thoroughly beat in molasses.
Sift together soda, salt, ginger, pepper and flour. Add to creamed mixture and beat to mix very well.
Chill dough until it is easy to handle.
Shape dough with hands into little balls about the size of large marbles. Dip each into sugar before baking.
Place 1½ inches apart on a lightly greased baking sheet.
Bake at 350 from 12 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned. Remove baking sheet and let cookies cool on it for about 1 minute, then transfer them to rack to cool completely.
Makes around 6 or 7 dozen.
.
Totally different treat and one I’ve long wanted to try out yet annually forget about come holiday cookie baking time: Whipped Shortbread Cookies.
satby
I’ve got Greek style avgolemono soup going in the Instant Pot and I’m debating whether I should finish making the marzipan-chocolate pie I started or to wait until tomorrow. The crust and marzipan is ready, but I would have to run to the store for cream for the ganache; yeah, not doing that now.
I’ve been having trouble with making bread in my normally fool proof breadmaker, but a friend suggested it was because I keep my house too cold for a full rise. Anyone ever hear of that?
NotMax
Of course #45 ought to have read @Betty Cracker.
Inspectrix
From the Sicilian side of the family we make Sausage Bread. This is similar
https://www.mangiabedda.com/sicilian-sausage-bread-bignolati
except I add cheese and egg wash for a golden shiny crust. It my family there is no shame in starting with pre-made pizza dough.
My sweetie’s family is German so we make Pfeffernuesse. I premix the spice mix so I can make multiple batches. This is a recipe that is close enough:
https://www.daringgourmet.com/pfeffernuesse-german-iced-gingerbread-cookies/
sometimes I made them iced, other years I dust with powdered sugar.
NotMax
@NotMax
alt = salt
So many typos, so little time. And so it goes….
Kristine Pennington
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
No, I’ve not done springerle – would love to try tho – I love the molds that are used! And yes alot of our families recipes have Jewish ties to them.
NotMax
@satby
Dubious yet wouldn’t completely discount the possibility. Maybe try warming any water used first for a few seconds in the nuker, to ~75 or 80 degrees?
Scout211
@Scamp Dog:
I forgot to say that this recipe is for two 9×13 pans of rolls.
dmsilev
@UncleEbeneezer: Nice! The Huntington is such a lovely place to walk around, even if a lot of the galleries are still closed. Have you been to the Chinese garden section since they finished the expansion?
Rachel Bakes
Potato bread rising overnight in the fridge. Lots of holiday baking to come: family all get goody bags full of cookies, breads, brownies, and candy; a big cinnamon star (that my dad persists in calling monkey bread despite multiple corrections) for Christmas brunch; gifts for our son’s team; and random other people who stand still for long enough to get handed a bag or plate.
Once I get over this darn cold I’ll be able to get started and fill up the freezer. Here’s hoping that gets me in the holiday spirit.
Rachel Bakes
Made kanelbullar last month after finding a recipe last spring. Those were a big hit at home and with the extended family so those are going on the to be baked list. But I need more cardamom before starting that.
satby
@NotMax: yeah, I have tried that. Bought some different rapid rise yeast to try next time. And whipped shortbread just went on the list. Interesting they insist that 1/2 butter, 1/2 stick margarine makes the best tasting ones. My grandmother swore by using 1/2 shortening, 1/2 butter in her chocolate chip cookies so that they’d have “some body” as she put it.
Glidwrith
Made fruitcake. Made fudge.
Discovered son dumped the homemade fruited syrup for the fruitcake down the drain.
NWO Joe
Been said a few times in the thread but bears repeating : Bacon. Jam.
Any recipe that starts with a quantity of bacon is going to be a good one. I may have to try making some to take to work.
I too would be glad to hear your perfected recipe for this… (on edit I see your reply above; looks like one of those things that gets put together as you go. Gonna have to skip the stout as all my coworkers are in recovery, though)
Princess
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: our pepparkakor recipe also uses cinnamon cloves and ginger in equal proportions and I think the cloves are key. Never tried it with orange though!
But I want ruemara’a black cake recipe. I adore black cake.