Several weeks ago, found us with pullets up to almost full-size laying, and waaay too many eggs in the fridge. I decided to try my hand at an egg-heavy baking venture. After looking at a few different recipes (and deciding that we probably would never eat that much pound cake if I froze a bunch...) I settled on Challah bread. It's yummy, and uses quite a few eggs....unfortunately, it also looks a bit...ahem..intensive...and no, I have no family recipe to go on. Instead, I borrowed someone else's. An expert, Smitten Kitchen. :-)

Her recipe pretty much says it all, and really did make for a pretty easy experience.  I don't have any pics of the dough, but S. was kind enough to get my attempts at following Smitten Kitchen's braiding directions burned into monitors everywhere. :-) I gave up on the directions (sorry!) and just stuck to what I know, which is a fairly straightforward multi-strand braid....take the right-most and alternate over-under-over, then take the new right-most and repeat. Not authentic, I'm sure....but it looks much more presentable than my earlier attempts.


After braiding, I brushed both loaves with lots and lots of egg yolk....


Then into the oven. The loaves did take a bit longer to bake then the instructions said...but I used the internal temperature guidelines...and that worked out great! We ate one loaf right away, and froze the other one for later. This was very yummy---it took a while, with all the risings, but I'll definitely make it again...