Challah: You win some, you lose some, and then you make chocolate bread pudding.

This week I had two very specific bread cravings: one for brioche and the other for challah. I’ve made brioche before, but had never made challah, so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone by making challah–I could satisfy my bread craving and make something I’d never made before for One Good Loaf.
I found a recipe (Peter Reinhart’s) that looked good and got to work.
Everything went smoothly except for the fact that my dough was way too sticky and wet when I went to knead it and I had to add a bunch of flour. But after that, no problems. It rose beautifully, braided easily, and into the oven it went.
Halfway through the baking time I rotated the pan as the recipe directed and it was smelling and looking yummy. So far so good. Yeah, well that’s when I got distracted and just let the bread finish the rest of the time left on the timer instead of checking on it before it was done. I had even set the timer to go off 5 minutes early, just in case.
Well, it wasn’t early enough because my bread was over done. That’s twice now that I’ve done that in the period of one week people! I have got to get my brain screwed back in.
No, I’m going to blame it on the bread goblins. I’m sure they turned the temperature up on my oven or something. Surely I am not capable of over baking bread twice in one week!
Well the bread was beautiful, but as a result of being over baked it had a thicker dryer crust. I quickly determined that although we would definitely eat some of it, there was no way we were going to eat our way through the entire massive loaf of less than perfect challah.
Well I was not about to let all that work go to waste, so I decided to take advantage of having it sitting there on my countertop and turn it into something sinful and yummy. I turned to Tartelette, my source for all things sinful and yummy, and she (as always) did not disappoint. I used her recipe for Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding (but omitted the bananas because I realized after I had already started cooking that I was out of bananas!) and it was the perfect remedy for challah gone awry.
The resulting dish was moist, creamy, chocolaty, and definitely a success. Total comfort food and a wonderful way to make sure that my hard work didn’t go to waste. I’m so impressed with myself.

Coming Sunday: Un, deux, trois et voila! Shortbread!