Challah for Converts or Real Bakers Use Math

For a long time, I have wanted to convert my recipe for challah from volume to weight. Serious bakers weigh their ingredients instead of measuring them out in cups and teaspoons. There are two reasons for this. First of all, the weight of certain ingredients, especially flour, can vary greatly depending on how loosely or tightly it is packed in the cup. Sifted flour weighs far less than non-sifted. Cookbooks try to get around this by telling you how to scoop and sweep the flour in an attempt to make your cup of flour weigh what their cup of flour weighs.

Or take salt.  I use kosher salt in my bread, about a teaspoon and a half. Now if you use the same volume of salt but use table salt, you bread will be saltier. Not because kosher salt is “less salty” which some people seem to think, but because kosher salt has bigger crystals so it has less salt per unit of volume.

Why not just bypass the vagueness and weigh your ingredients on a scale? More and more, you see recipes that offer the quantity of ingredients by weight in addition to volume.

The second reason is that a recipe by weight is easier to express as a formula, which makes it easier to adjust the size of the batch. For example, if you normally bake two loaves, which feed 10 people, it is very easy if you have the formula to make a batch of dough for 100. The relative weights of the ingredients stay constant. With the right formula you can also change water into wine, though that takes a bit longer.

I now bake all of my bread measuring the ingredients by weight.

Except challah.

I have been making challah every week for about 15 years and I memorized my recipe by volume long ago. On a typical Friday morning when I am mixing the dough, I am usually rushing to finish so that I can get to work on time. So I have never been able to take the extra time to measure the ingredients and then weigh them to convert the recipe.

But today being both a holiday and a challah-day, I took the time to do just that. My weights are in grams as I find the metric system much better especially when you need to adjust quantities. I never have to stop to think about how many grams are in a kilogram. Everything is tens just like the fingers on my two hands, which are still surprisingly useful for simple arithmetic.

A note on the “Bakers Formula.” The baker’s formula expresses the relative weight of the ingredients compared to total weight of the flours. So if the flour is half bread flour and half all-purpose, as in my challah recipe, the total flour will always be 100 percent. Therefore, the total percentages will always be more than 100 percent, which can be confusing until you understand what it means. For example, if you have 1,000 grams of flour and formula states that the water (hydration) is 67 percent, then you will need 670 grams of water (see why I love the metric system?).

Here are the results of my inquires:

My Challah Recipe by Weight with Baker’s Percentages

Ingredient grams %

Bread Flour 400 50

All-purpose Flour 400 50

Water 350               44

Yeast 6 0.75

Salt                               10 1.0

Vegetable Oil 65 8.0

Honey 115 14

Eggs 115 14

So next week, I’ll make the challah by weight and see if any adjustments are necessary. Of course small adjustments may be necessary because not every egg weighs exactly 57.5 grams and I always use two eggs in a batch but we are talking about a few grams of flour here or there.

By the way, if you want to kick your bread making up a notch, I highly recommend “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart. It is a beautiful book with clear step by step directions that will have you making wonderful bread in no time. He has a nice blog too. You can Google it.

Let me know if you try my recipe and if you convert to baking by weight. I think you will like the results and people will be impressed when you start talking about baker’s formulas.

Happy New Year!