Chag Sukkot Sameach to you all! 🌿🍋🌿 Jews of NY
Lulav & Etrog Challah by Challah With Love:
What you need – 1 ball of challah dough, a set of kitchen scales, a dough cutter or sharp knife, a large baking tray and some baking paper, green sprinkles – I like to use a mixture of both regular sprinkles and the sanding sugar so that you see green everywhere. Yellow sprinkles – also a mixture of both regular and sanding sugar. And sunflower seeds. Plus one egg, a bowl and basting brush.
Instructions:
Start with one challah worth of dough – mine weighs approximately 980g.
¾ of your dough makes the 3 stems of the lulav. The other ¼ makes up the bottom of your lulav and the etrog. Divide your dough. Take the ¾’s and put the ¼ aside.
Divide the piece of dough into 3rds. Take your first 3rd of dough – this is going to make up the middle stem. Divide it into 3rds. We’re then going to actually add more dough to this! I have worked out that each part of my dough is 95g.
Roll out your 3 strands nice and long and then braid it into a plait. I find that if you start from the middle when braiding you end up with a beautifully even plait.
Lay this on your baking tray which is covered with a piece of baking paper.
Pick up your 2nd stem’s worth of dough. This is going to make one of the stems with leaves. The stem needs to be divided into 3 pieces each weighing around 40g. Roll each of these out really thin and long then braid it. Start braiding from the middle once again.
Do the same with the other ball of dough for the other stem with leaves. Lay these on your baking tray next to the middle stem.
With the remaining dough from these two stems divide it into small pieces 6g each. You need about 10 of these for each stem.
To make the leaves on the right-hand stem roll short, thin sausages and shape it into leaves. Attach them to the stem.
To make the leaves on the left-hand stem roll your dough into smooth balls by wrapping the dough around itself. Then shape it into round leaves and attach to the stem.
Add any remaining dough to the piece of dough you have sitting aside. Divide this so that ¼ of the dough is set aside for the etrog. ¾ of the dough is for the base of the lulav. Put aside your dough for the etrog.
Divide your last piece of dough into 3rds. Put 1/3 aside for your wrapping around the base. Divide the large potion into 3rds. Roll out into sausage shapes that are quite chunky and braid. Place this at the bottom of your lulav.
Pick up the remaining piece of dough and roll it out really long and thin. Cut it with the dough cutter to make the wrapping around the base of the lulav.
Pick up your remaining piece of dough. Roll it out long and thin and tie it into a knot – I loop mine around twice. This becomes your etrog. Lay it on the baking tray.
With this we don’t leave it to rise like normal challah because we don’t want it to expand too much.
Beat your egg and brush it over the whole lulav and etrog. Sprinkle green sprinkles over the lulav and use the sunflower seeds to decorate the rope around the base.
Sprinkle yellow sprinkles over the etrog.
Bake on 160degrees Celsius for approx. 20 mins, turn it around then bake for another 12 mins or until cooked through.
And there you have your lulav and etrog challah.
Click here to see a step by step of how to make this Challah from scratch.
