Forest Feast: Pomegranate Challah

The Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur was last week, which continues the season of the Jewish New Year. To celebrate this annual cycle, challah is often formed into a round (instead of being braided) and harvest type foods, like pomegranate, are often eaten. I combined these ideas into a sweet bread, baked with lots of honey and pomegranate seeds. You can work the pom seeds into the dough itself, or just sprinkle them on the top, or both!

I have tried a million challah recipes and came up with this combo of ingredients that I like best. Bread is not that hard, you can do it! Here’s how:

Put one packet of yeast in a bowl with 3/4 cup warm water and let it sit for 5 min until it gets a little bubbly. Then toss in an egg, 1/3 cup honey, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, a big pinch of coarse salt and a half stick melted butter. Mix it all by hand or using a mixer. Then add flour, little by little until it’s no longer sticking to the side of the bowl and is thick and doughy and doesn’t seem to absorb any more flour (you’ll know…). You usually need about 4 cups of flour.

Knead it for a couple minutes (or just let it go around in the mixer with the dough hook) then throw that lump of dough into a big bowl you’ve coated in oil, and cover the top of the bowl with saran wrap. It’ll rise to about twice the size in a couple hours. Then take it out, roll it into a snake, then coil it into a round. Sprinkle with pom seeds and brush with egg (optional, but makes it feel more official!).

Let the dough rise on a cookie sheet for another 45 min or so, then pop it in a pre-heated oven for about 25 min at 350˚F. Check it once in a while to see how brown it’s getting, and tap it on the bottom to see if it’s done (it should sound kind of hollow).

Enjoy!