Jess's Chocolate Chip Challah

In a big bowl: Put dry ingredients in a bowl that measures 18” across and 7” deep and whisk flour, sugar, and salt all together.

In a separate small bowl: Mix eggs and oil.

In a third bowl, mix water, sugar, and yeast together and let the mixture sit for 15 minutes until it bubbles.

Make a well in the middle of flour and pour in eggs/oil mixture and then water/yeast mixture.

Mix together with your hands. (Note: It’s going to look lumpy and not smooth at all... just combine and DO NOT try to kneed it.) To make sure all the flour is in the mixture, add up to a half cup of canola oil as needed to get the flour at the bottom mixed together fully. Put a tiny coat of oil on top to keep it from getting dry. Put Saran Wrap across the top of the bowl, and put a cloth on top. Let it rise for an hour, and it will double in size. Punch it down to get the air out. Recover it with Saran Wrap. Let it rise again for 1-3 hours.

Put some flour on your countertop and put all the fluffy dough onto your countertop (it will deflate a bit during this process, but that’s fine). Separate a golfball-sized piece to make the bracha on it and put that into the tin foil.

Divide the big lump of dough into 5 equal parts. Take each piece, divide it into thirds and braid it.

Use tin pans that are great big loaf pans, 12 inches or so. Put a foot long piece of parchment paper and lay in the braid.

Tuck the edges of the braid in. When you tuck the edges in – do it very slightly – you want the loaf to be the same thickness all over, so it cooks evenly. It is not really tucking--it is more to make sure it is together.

To make the chocolate one, use 1/2 bag of pareve chocolate chips per challah. Put the chocolate chips sprinkled on the dough and work it in, then divide into 3 and braid as above. You can also make it cinnamon with sugar.

Cover them with a white towel and let it rise again for an hour.

Take 1 egg and a tablespoon of sugar and brush it on top of the challah (sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the chocolate chip one).

Bake on 350 in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes. (Throw the tinfoil with the blessed challah piece on the bottom and leave it in the oven until it burns.)

Juggle around the challahs halfway through baking if there are 3 crowded on one oven shelf. When you have three challahs in an oven, move their positions – middle one on end,etc. The heat of pans don’t matter – there is a big piece of parchment between the challah and the pan. To check that it’s done after about 25 minutes, roll it off the parchment paper to make sure the bottom is slightly browned. Chocolate chip challahs takes a bit longer, maybe 32 to 33 minutes.

Take challahs out of oven, immediately take them out of aluminum pan and put them on a rack to cool off.