Ube Challah
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This bread combines both my husband’s and my cultures together. Ube is a purple root vegetable that is typically found in Filipino desserts and baked goods. Challah is a soft, braided bread that is enjoyed on the Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest (Friday night to Saturday night). The ube or purple sweet potato powder is meant to give this challah a distinctive, beautiful purple color. This bread is not meant to be sweet or have a strong ube flavor, but play around with the recipe to make it yours: try increasing the honey or adding more ube extract to the dough.
This recipe makes two challahs.
Experiment! Here I divided the dough and adjusted the color of each portion with varying amounts of ube extract and ube powder.
This is also amazing the next day in my super indulgent and delicious ube challah stuffed brûléed french toast for weekend brunch.
Ube Challah
Ingredients
Preparation
- In a large bowl or stand mixer (with dough hook), add yeast and warm water. Mix in 2 eggs, honey, salt, oil, ube extract, and purple sweet potato powder.
- Slowly mix in the flour, a cup at a time, until dough is well incorporated and elastic. You'll know it's ready when the dough starts to come off cleanly from the hook and the sides of the bowl. If you find your dough is still too sticky, add about 1/4 cup of additional flour at a time until you reach a pizza dough-like consistency.
- Cover bowl with a damp towel to let rise for about 1.5 hours.
- After 1.5 hours, the dough should have doubled in size. Punch dough down and put onto a floured surface. With your bench scraper, divide dough in half and knead each half for about 4 minutes, adding a dusting of flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking. Use the bench scraper to pick up any dough that might have stuck to the work surface and add back to the dough.
- Divide each half of dough into three pieces. Stretch and roll each of the three pieces into long logs, about 1.5 inches in diameter and about 14 inches in length.
- You should now have 6 long logs. Take 3 logs and braid, pinching the ends to unite the logs on the top and bottom. Tuck the starting and end points under the loaf. Repeat with the remaining 3 logs to form your second loaf.
- Carefully, transfer each loaf to its own baking sheet. Beat the last remaining egg to make the egg wash and brush the top of each loaf. Reserve the egg wash for step 10.
- Cover each loaf with a damp towel and let rise for 1 hour.
- Heat oven to 375 degrees.
- After 1 hour, brush the remainder of the egg wash onto each loaf. Sprinkle each loaf with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.
- Bake for about 40-50 minutes, until the loaves turn to a rich brown color. Loaves should sound hollow when you knock the surface.
