HOLIDAY BAKING
How To Make Mini Challah Breads
Baking with Gabriella — Cinnamon twist
The traditional Challah (Kalács) Bread base recipe from my grandmother can be found here.
To create a mini version the inspiration was the Christmas holiday. I decided to make small Kalács so I can give them away as gifts to people around me.
I made the regular dough with another twist. I was making snickerdoodle cookies and had some leftover cinnamon with sugar. I felt that adding that to the dough will give it a nice holiday twist. Without even thinking much of it I just folded it into the dough. Since I experimented with adding different flavors to Kalács before as you can see in my base recipe, I was just hoping this will turn out great. It did.
To make the little mini Kalács after the second rising of the dough I cut the dough in half and cut the halves into quarters. I used these quarters for my two bigger pieces. I cut each quarter into three segments to braid the Kalács. I created a unique braid as well for one of them I used 6 instead of three rolled-out pieces.
I was having fun and felt creative to try something new. For the other bigger piece I just used the regular 3 braid system. For the other half of the dough, I cut 4 equal pieces and from each of those 3 smaller pieces to create the mini Challah loaves of bread. I rolled each of them out and braided them as usual.
I placed them on a mat and let them rise one more time until doubled. I used melted butter to spread on the top and the sides before putting it into the oven to bake. I also added some turbo cane sugar on top, just a little sprinkle. The mini challah loaves of bread were ready in about 40 minutes the two bigger ones needed a little more time. It depends on your oven. Just about 10 minutes before they were done, I brushed the tops with milk to give it a nice brown top. Alternatively, they can be brushed with egg and milk mixture before going into the oven.
The smell as they were baking was sensational and the people, I shared the Kalács with were happy about it.
Kalács is wonderful fresh by itself, with butter or jam. Also, when it is a few days old it can be toasted. It is very great that way. It can also be sliced and frozen like any other bread. When a few days old makes a great French toast.
I hope you will enjoy this creation and thank you for reading this recipe.
Kalács is close to my heart because it is something my grandmother used to make for us.
Cynthia A. Morgan I thought you might like this one.
Paul Ryburn, M.Sc. you might like this one as well:)
Happy Baking,
Gabriella
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