Hatful of Challah

I made Challah.  It's a Jewish bread with a lot of eggs going on.  I got it all braided up before I realised that the the thing was too large for my silly little tiny oven.  The thing was all ready to go, so I just chopped it in half.  I didn't really know what else to do.  So instead of one nice Challah braid, I ended up with two loaves that looked more like Glo Worms than anything else.  Also, I used all my eggs in the bread, so I wasn't able to get the tops shiny with an egg wash.  Oh well.

 

This picture wasn't necessarily planned.  I just thought I'd throw it in there for a bit of irony.  Challah and porkchops?  Sorry.  I guess that's about as tasteful as a hot dog in a synagogue.

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Oh yes, things to note about this bread.  It has eggs, a good hit of sugar, and a fair amount of fat, in the form of oil.  All the Challah formulas I've seen use oil, but just the other day I saw one that used butter.  Anybody know how kosher that is, to use butter and all?  Because I know there's something about keeping dairy products away from animal products.  And so, oil in the presence of egg is better than butter with egg, or at least that has been my assumption.

Also, whenever you put egg yolks in bread, they help keep it soft and rich (because of the fats), but they also keep the bread "fresh."  Yolks have lecithin, which is an emulsifier.  Emulsifiers are used to combine two substances that wouldn't normally mix, such as oil and water.  But in the case of bread, emulsifiers help to prevent something called starch retrogradation, or staling.  They keep the moisture in the starch, essentially, so the bread doesn't dry out quite as quickly.