better than never

we share a common desire to gather around food. to eat; to eat together. but we also share a common disdain for doing the dishes after =(

it seems that whenever i make challah, the dough always comes out too wet, and i need to add a lot of flour to it. i don't know if this makes the bread become too dense, or less tasty.
the soaker to activate the enzymes in the whole grain, thereby starting the flavour production. and the biga, in which a little yeast is added to start the fermentation process. this is the 100% whole-wheat challah, so everything is whole-wheat flour.

i think the magic in making bread is the involvement of yeast. the point is to work with the organism; balancing time, patience, heat, water and food, you set it growing and performing its leavening. you can see it in the biga, full of small bubbles inside - proof of the life you're manipulating.
after endless addition of extra flour and 30 minutes, the dough finally stopped sticking so badly. but i couldn't tell if i had added too much flour or not.
dividing and preparing the dough for braiding. i've decided that the best way to make sure that all the braids are of equal mass is to cut and weigh them first, and preshaping into a ball since they will be made up of scraps.
this is by far my best attempt at forming the strands for braiding. they were all sufficiently long, and tapering just nicely at the ends.
this is the 6-braid. i love my ramekin so much that i've used it to hold the egg wash, which i must highlight - again - is made by straining a beaten egg. it removes the white coagulates which refuse to mix with the yolks.
the challah came out smelling like kfc, which made me want to eat kfc. and the bread is denser, less fluffy, than the transitional version, which i think is to be expected. but i couldn't be sure whether is was heavier than it should be, due to all that extra flour i added.

today, i tried five different desserts at bakerzin (four of which i've eaten before). diet i really going to start tomorrow. and i think - in a weird way - chocolate seems to sooth my throat; i can sing in the higher register now.