*My mom and I baked these two seeded challahs.*

One of my favorite holiday traditions is baking a challah together with my mom.
This year we tried a cool recipe with seeded strands - it makes braiding a breeze!
Here is the recipe:

Ingredients, two breads:

665 g flour
20 g dry yeast
2 teaspoons of salt
60 g sugar
0.4 dl olive oil
4.2 dl luke warm water

Toppings:
about 1 cup of each topping
1 egg

Directions:

In a mixer bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, oil and active dry yeast.
2. Using a mixer with a knead/hook attachment or your hands, slowly add warm water to the dry ingredients.
3.Mix until the dough comes together, ensuring it's moist and not too dry.
4. Knead the dough in the mixer for 12 minutes or by hand for 20 minutes.
5. Cover with a kitchen towel, then let it rise in fridge overnight.

6. The next day: Divide the dough into 18 equal balls of approx 65 grams each and cover for a second round of rising of 25 minutes.
7. Roll each ball into a 14-inch strand. Wet a paper towel, roll one strand in it, then coat in your toppings. Repeat for 6 strands, 2 of each topping.

8. Take 2 plain strands and set one topping-coated strand, in between them. We used: poppy seeds, sesame seeds and flax seeds. Repeat for the remaining strands. Braid together.
9. Place the braided challahs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover and let it proof for 20 minutes.
10. Preheat the oven to 350°F/176°C. Beat one full egg and brush it only on the plain strands (not seeded ones!) using a thin paintbrush.
11. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the challah has a golden deep color.

A long time ago I was the biggest fan of the Mallorca Sweet Bread from Starbucks. Not too sweet, a bit mushy, a bit fluffy…It was just the perfect coffee pastry to me. Fast forward ten years and the Starbucks in my area has long but discontinued their Mallorca Sweet Bread offering. The other day I tried re-creating them at home. I’m not a baker and I usually don’t consume pastries, so I was lacking ingredients like white sugar, and kitchen essentials like parchment paper, a whisk and a food mixer. I was still able to bake pretty good-looking and delicious-tasting Mallorca Sweet Bread rolls! I used this recipe as a base, and then halved it, plus substituted white sugar for coconut sugar. If you plan to bake without a mixer, I would recommend baking a smaller batch like I did with this recipe. You can only mix so much dough by hand.

Seena’s Six Organic Mallorca Sweet Breads

Ingredients:

Use all Organic ingredients

1 stick butter
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup + 2 table spoons coconut sugar
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 pkg dry yeast
3 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
powder sugar
1 tbs butter for greasing the baking pan and 2 tbs butter for brushing the rolls with melted butter

Melt the stick of butter.
Mix the melted butter stick, the 4 egg yolks and the 1/3 cup + 2 table spoons of coconut sugar in a bowl.
Ideally you would have a whisk and whisk it together until smooth.
If you don’t have a whisk, just use a fork like I did.
Mix the 1/4 milk and 3/4 cup water together and heat them until lukewarm.
Put the 1/2 of yeast into the water and milk and let it sit for 30 seconds.
Mix the <milk/water/yeast> with the <egg/sugar/butter>.
Add salt and flour. Ideally you would do this in a kitchen mixer.
If you don’t have a mixer just continue using your fork and your arm.
Add a little bit of flower at a time to make it easier to avoid lumps.
When everything is mixed, go ahead and cover the bowl with a cloth and let the dough rise for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes, remove the cloth.
Grease a baking pan with butter, or use parchment paper.
Now it’s time to make the rolls.
Take an extra dash of flower and spread it onto your kitchen counter top.
Divide the dough into six equal pieces. Create long spaghetti like shapes of each of them.
Then roll them up into little circles. Tuck the end part of the dough in under the main part.
Put the rolls onto your baking pan and let them rise for another 25 minutes under the same kitchen cloth.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Remove the kitchen cloth and brush the rolls with melted butter.
Put the rolls in the oven for 20 -25 minutes.
Let the rolls cool down and cover them with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!