Shaping a Round Challah

Whether you celebrate Rosh Hashana or not, a round challah is always festive and impressive. I searched far and wide for how to properly shape a round challah, but none of them looked the way I had envisioned. I wanted something unique, so decided to implement a small ramekin. It serves as a scaffold for my round shape and it also gives me an interesting reservoir for the placement of honey.

This post is not a recipe for challah (something that will come separately). It is purely focused on shaping and braiding. Let’s get started.

We start by creating a braid much like you would for a normal challah bread. In my example, I used 860g of fermented dough. This was divided into four pieces of 215g each.

I start by pre-rolling 4 equally-sized short strands and let them rest for at least 15 minutes covered in a damp cloth. Doing this makes rolling the final strands easier.

For my example, 215g pieces are rolled into 24″ (2 foot) strands which taper at the ends.

Once you have four pieces rolled out, place them in a cross with the center stuck to your work surface. There is one strand each for the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions.

Strand 1 is moved to the 4 o’clock position between strands 2 and 3. Make sure the center, where the four pieces join, is firmly fixed to your work surface.

Now strand 3 moves up to the 12 o’clock position.

Strand 4 moves across between strands 2 and 1. In this picture, I moved strand 1 closer to the 6 o’clock to make more space.

Lastly, strand 2 moves across to the 7 o’clock position.

This is the same exact situation as above except that the strands are re-positioned into the original 12, 3, 6, 9 o’clock positions (just like how we started). Stand 3 now becomes strand 1 again, strand 4 becomes strand 2 again, and so on.

Now you just repeat the steps you did above exactly the same.

Repeat the same steps until you end up with a braided rope. At this point, you separate the ends you joined to the table (at the very beginning and the left part of the picture). This way, you have 4 free strands on each side.

Now the fun part. Place a small ramekin as shown.

Simply join the strands at their ends until everything is well-sealed and nothing is coming undone. Allow to proof as called for in the recipe and straight into the oven it goes.

Your guests are sure to ‘ooohhh’ and ‘aaahhhh’ when they get a look at this. I especially like placing honey in the ramekin which adds a nice bit of color and interest to your masterpiece. It’s also quite delicious when you dip piece of bread in it. Stay tuned for an upcoming recipe for challah dough.

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