Pumpkin Challah ala James Beard

Originally posted October 31, 2009 This recipe is perfect for the holidays and will win over even those who don't like pumpkin:

For the Halloween weekend, I decided to go baking mad. I made Pumpkin Challah a few weeks ago, which was delicious, but the recipe itself made the dough too wet & very hard to work with. Most recently I made Challah from the Beard on Bread book by none other than James Beard himself.

Then I thought, well, why not just add pumpkin to the beard recipe and see what happens?

3 Tbsp active dry yeast
1 1/3 c warm water (approx 100-115 degrees)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp coarse salt (I used sea salt)
3 tbsp soft butter
3 eggs
1 c pumpkin puree
2 ½ c AP Flour
2 ½ c Whole Grain Pastry Flour
1 tbsp white or black pepper (or to taste)
1 yolk mixed with 1 tsp cold water
Poppy seeds

Proof yeast in the water in a large bowl. Add sugar & salt. Then add butter, pumpkin & eggs. Now add your flour, a cup at a time as you may not need all of it. Beat thoroughly with wooden spoon. The book said to dump out the bread, knead it and place in a buttered bowl.

I did that the first time and wasn’t delighted with the results, so I thought I would try something different. I left everything in the bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, set it on the counter & walked away for two hours.

Next, I scraped out the dough & set it on my clean counter after I did a ‘bread fling’, meaning I dusted the counter with flour. My final dough weighed approx two lbs. Beard calls for 6 balls, so I weighed each one so they were close to 8 oz each (ish). I then rolled them out to the desired length, did two braids and left them to rise again.


Once they rise, brush them with egg wash and bake for about 45 min at 325 F. They should sound hollow if you tap them. Pull from oven and allow to cool before cutting open and enjoying. This dough also makes for really lovely rolls, nice & fluffy and ready for stuffing with...well, just about anything!