Doni’s Challah for a Crowd
4 cups milk 1 1/2 sticks of butter 2/3 cup sugar 3 tablespoons active dry yeast 6 eggs, beaten 3 1/2 teaspoons salt 12 cups flour (bread flour works best)Put milk, butter and sugar in a microwavable bowl and heat for 2 minutes. Remove and stir well to dissolve the sugar. Return the bowl to the microwave and bring the contents to a boil. (Or, bring everything to boil on your stovetop.)
Stir the mixture and then pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Let cool to about 110 degrees.
Add the yeast and whisk well. (It will appear slightly lumpy. Don’t freak.) Let it sit about 10 minutes, or until the yeasty-milk mixture looks foamy and bubbly. Now add the eggs and salt to the milky-yeast mixture and stir well.
Using a heavy wood spoon, stir in the flour, a few cups at a time, until the dough is sticky.
Generously flour your work surface, then pour the sticky dough onto it. Add more flour on top of the dough, so you can start to fold it and knead it without getting your fingers stuck in the dough. (Try using the karate-chop part of your hand, and avoid pushing your fingers deep into the dough during this sticky phase.)
The goal is to keep adding just enough flour to make the flour not stick to your work surface and your hands. However, don’t add so much flour that the dough becomes stiff or difficult to work with. Think Flubber, or a lava-lamp look.
Knead the dough. Turn it, fold it, push it, turn it, fold it, push it. Repeat those methodical steps until your dough is soft and supple. Flour your work surface as needed.
Use hot water to wash the bowl in which the dough was made. (I don’t advocate using soap to wash the dough bowl at this point; too great a risk of having the dough taste soapy. Dry the bowl well. Smear butter inside the bowl.)
Place your dough in the bowl and rub it around in the bowl to mop up some butter. Then flop the dough over, so the dough now has butter on its top and bottom.
Cover the dough with a towel (so a crust doesn’t form, which might curb its rising potential).
Set the bowl in a dry, warm place (like an oven that was turned on recently and then turned off). Let the dough rise for about 1 to 2 hours, or until your dough is about double its former size. (Sometimes I’ll use my finger to draw a line in the butter inside the bowl in anticipation of where double might be. Then, as the dough rises and approaches that line, I know it’s almost ready.)
Punch down the dough. (It’s fun.)
Knead the dough enough to form it into an informal rectangle. Cut the dough into 8 equal pieces.
Roll each section into about a 45-inch-long rope. (Of course, if you want shorter, fatter loaves, make the rope shorter. If you want longer, thinner loaves, make the rope even longer.) Now cut the rope into thirds.
Pinch the three pieces together at one end, and braid. (It’s easier if you braid with the lengths pointing toward you, instead of trying to braid sideways. Anyone who’s ever braided hair will have the advantage here.) At the end of the braid, pinch the ends tightly and tuck under slightly.
Set loaves on parchment-paper covered baking pans, leaving room between the loaves so they can spread out. Cover with the same towels and let rise again, but this time only about 1 hour, until the loaves aren’t quite double in size. (They’ll rise more during baking.)
Brush with an egg wash (2 beaten eggs and 3 tablespoons of water).
Bake on the middle rack of a pre-heated 350-degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes, or until the loaves are golden brown and sound slightly hollow when thumped.
Makes 8 loaves.