Whole wheat sourdough challah, fragrant with olive oil and honey, is a nourishing bread – rich, flavorful and worth the extra effort it takes to lovingly prepare the dough, roll out the strands and intricately braid the loaves. While typically prepared from refined white flour, vegetable oil or margarine and refined white sugar, challah is, indeed, a loaf for special occasions – but preparing this traditional bread from wholesome ingredients elevates challah beyond the mundane to something that truly nourishes the body and spirit while satisfying the tastebuds.
In this version of challah, we use soft white wheat flour. Soft white wheat is a whole grain, differing from hard red wheat which is typically used for breads, in that it is softer, with a lower protein content and is better suited to preparing pastries. When transforming your family’s favorite treats and sweets made from refined white flour, to more nutrient-dense whole grain alternatives, choosing whole soft white wheat flour enables you to maintain the baking qualities of white flour while nourishing your family with the myriad vitamins and minerals typically found in whole grains. Of course, whole grain is rife with antinutrients including enzyme inhibitors which inhibit good digestion as well as food phytates which bind up minerals in the digestive tract inhibiting your body from fully absorbing all the micronutrients whole grain can offer so the proper preparation of flours and breads is essential not only for improving flavor, but also in protecting from mineral deficiencies. Fortunately, sourdough fermentation as called for in this recipe for whole wheat challah dramatically improves the nutritive qualities of whole grains by neutralizing enzyme inhibitors and degrading phytic acid.
If you’re serious about bread baking, you might also consider purchasing a grain grinder for your home (see sources). After whole grain is milled, packed and allowed to sit in bulk bins or on the shelves of your local grocery store, nutrients are lost – vitamin E and other vitamins slowly degrade the longer the flour sits. When you grind grain fresh, not only is the flavor vastly improved, but many of the fragile vitamins and enzymes remain intact. Bread, like this whole wheat challah, becomes a true luxury when prepared from freshly ground flour.
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Whole Wheat Sourdough Challah with Poppy Seeds
Whole wheat sourdough challah, sweet and tart and fragrant with honey and poppy seeds, offers a decidedly more nourishing take on the classic sweet bread, omitting refined white flour and sugar for more nourishing alternatives: whole soft white wheat flour, honey and unrefined extra virgin olive oil.
Sourdough Challah: Ingredients
- 1 quart proofed sourdough starter (see sources)
- 7 cups whole soft white wheat flour (see sources), divided, plus extra for kneading
- 1 cup filtered water
- 5 eggs, divided
- 1/4 cup honey (see sources)
- 1 teaspoon unrefined sea salt (see sources)
- 1/2 cup unrefined extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to grease the bowls (see sources)
- poppy seeds, to dress the challah
Sourdough Challah: Equipment
- mixing bowl and wooden spoon
- stand mixer
- kitchen towel
- baking sheet or baking stone
Sourdough Challah: Method
- Stir one quart proofed and bubbly levain with four cups soft white wheat flour and one cup filtered water. Pour the levain and flour into the basin of a standmixer equipped with a dough hook and mix until the dough forms a solid lump, cleaning the sides of the bowl, about three minutes.
- Transfer the dough to an oiled mixing bowl, cover it with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for twelve hours.
- After the dough has rested for twelve hours, whisk four eggs, one-quarter cup honey, one teaspoon unrefined sea salt with one-half cup unrefined extra virgin olive oil.
- Transfer the dough back to the mixer equipped with a dough hook, pour in egg mixture and remaining three cups soft white wheat flour. Mix together until the dough forms a solid lump, about four minutes, then transfer to a floured surface for kneading.
- Knead the dough, adding additional flour as necessary, until it becomes smooth and pliable, about six to eight minutes.
- Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and allow it to rise until doubled in bulk, about one to two hours.
- After the dough has doubled in bulk, divide it into two equal portions. To make one loaf, divide one portion of the dough into three portions, then divide each of those three portions into two portions. You should have six equal portions of dough for one loaf of challah.
- With the palms of your hands, roll each of the loaf’s six portions of dough into a strand about twelve inches long and one and one-half inches wide. You should have six equal strands of dough for one loaf of challah.
- Braid the six strands of challah. (Register for Happy & Healthy Holidays to view the video tutorial on braiding a six-strand challah, available December 1st).
- Prepare the second half of dough in the same way as you prepared the first.
- Beat the remaining egg with two tablespoons water and brush it on the loaves.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Allow the loaves to rise again for about an hour, brush with egg wash a second time and dress with poppy seeds.
- Bake in an oven preheated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit until golden, about forty minutes.
- Cool loaves completely before serving.
YIELD: 2 loaves
TIME: 30 minutes (active time), 12 to 15 hours (fermentation and rising), 30 to 40 minutes (baking)
That looks gorgeous! And the recipe is a lot more appealing than the refined flour/sugar versions that are popping up all over the web
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I’ve got a happy starter and I’d love to try this, but I get completely lost with these volume measurements…
J –
I should really consider offering some metric conversions too. I better get on that.
That would be fantastic!
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I follow you in my RSS reader, so I’ll notice it when you do
Oh, metric conversions would be awesome!
This is a beautiful bread. I can see it along side some lentil stew!!
Oh yes! Lentil stew is wonderful – our version here uses bacon, though (http://nourishedkitchen.com/lentil-stew/)
This looks so delicious. Love the poppy seeds!
Beautiful, Jenny! I love it with the poppy seeds
I love bread, and I love to make it…..which is a huge problem I eat it all! I am VERY new to the whole eating healthy cultured foods idea…so excuse me for asking, but would this be gluten free??? It’s okay if it’s not, just want to get my healthy food lingo down pat!
Do you have a recommended source for the flour? I have only ever come across the red berries (I think… I buy from cultures for health… they only have 1 wheat flour from what I see.)
Thanks for your help! This looks delicious!
Sourdough challah? This looks so interesting – I’ve got to try it. My challah is the traditional sweet variety, but I love how this one sounds. And I love the idea of grinding my own grain. Must be so fresh that way! Thanks for the tips and the gorgeous photos.
Awesome recipe. Thanks for sharing this post.
This loaf looks amazing and whole wheat, wow. I used to work at a Great Harvest and we would make challah every week. It was fun to knead and then braid the loaves. That was where I learned why egg wash is used, and how the egg whites are used for shine and egg yolks are used for browning. I want to make this!
What hydration is your starter? I would like to try this one.
My mind is made up; I’m so making this! It’s just too pretty and sounds yummy! I must make one! =D
My little sourdough pet is only 3 days old though so I’ll have to wait…
I have never made sourdough before, but would love to try this recipe. When you call for ‘proofed’ starter, what does that mean exactly? I don’t live in the US anymore so I don’t want to purchase anything online. Can I just make this myself?
A sourdough starter or levain is something that is very easy to make at home. There are great instructions on the blog Wild Yeast, and I am sure that King Arthur would have a tutorial as well. Mine took about 7 days until it was ready to bake with, and can be made from different flours. I do mainly whole grain baking, but my starter is made from A.P. flour. I maintain my starter by feeding it fresh flour and water every few days. The night before I bake I feed it. In the morning it is bubbly, or ripe, or proofed. Many of the recipes I use call for ripe starter, but really it means the same as proofed. I hope this helps.
My flour supplier has “white whole wheat”, “red whole wheat” which are both the hard winter wheats, and “whole wheat pastry” flour, which is the softer spring wheat — is the whole wheat pastry flour what you would recommend for challah? I often use it for quick-breads, but have had more success with the hard red/white wheats for yeast breads. It sounds like the soft spring wheat is what you use for this recipe, but I wanted to be sure before I try it. LOVING the e-course — thanks so much for the work that you’re putting into the series!!
Looks great! I’ve been wanting to make Challah now for awhile now. I think I will this weekend!
ok seriously, that’s a LOT of dough. seriously.
i made this last night/ today and wanted to say that it smells delicious now baking in the oven. i couldn’t get the braid down, so instead i made 1 loaf, 6 hamburger buns, 1 sm. pan monkey bread, a few dinner rolls, and about 10 cinamon rolls… seriously a LOT of dough.
I have such a hard time with bread making, so i was determined to make this to a T… ha. that didn’t work out exactly.
thanks for the inspiration!
Just wondering if you soaked the flour in whey/ACV before you combined it with the starter. This is an amazing piece of baked art.
I didn’t soak it beforehand, but I believe I did use sprouted flour. I haven’t baked in so long, but it is a lovely, lovely bread. I hope you enjoy it.
Question: I’m about to buy a sourdough starter this month, and was planning on using sprouted spelt flour with it. To use different kinds of flours, like the kind called for in this recipe, would I have to have separate starters for each type of flour that I want to use, or could I just use the starter that I use with spelt flour and use wheat flour on occassion with it? Does that make sense? Thanks!!
I bet you could just use whatever kind of flour you want in your starter. I personally keep an unbleached white starter, and use it with whatever flour I want for my bread.
For instance, with this recipe that calls for a quart of starter, I’d take 1/2 of my starter (leave the other half to keep it pure) and feed it with the whole wheat until I got a quart, then complete the recipe.
It would be really great if you would post a bakers formula for this delicious looking bread.