Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah

This may be the most beautiful bread I've ever baked.

I'd written off challah for a long time because it looked a bit too complicated, but today I finally made the leap, and boy am I proud. My desire to overcome my challah fear was spurred on by two factors. One the fact that Peter got me The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook for Christmas and this recipe particularly stood out in all its sweet, salty glory (plus, there were really cool-looking weaving instructions!) The other is that as of late my sister and her architecture cohort has become obsessed with challah. The third fact, which I'm going to sort of nest as a subheading under facts one and two, is the amount of immensely rewarding "Holla!" jokes you can invent before/during/after making it.*

So here I present to you Deb's Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah. Four fig-stuffed, olive oil-infused strands of dough are woven together and dusted with sea salt. Sweet, salty, bread-y...who could possibly ask for more? This, as Deb indicates, would also make some really great French bread. Or you could slice it and eat it. Or toast it. Or you could ravenously tear it apart and slather honey all over it. I suggest option B.

Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah 
(copied over and slightly adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Bread:
1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/3 cup olive oil, plus more for the bowl
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt (or 1 1/2 tsp table salt
4 cups all-purpose four

Fig Filling
1 cup stemmed and roughly chopped dried figs
1/8 tsp freshly grated orange zest
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup orange juice
1/8 tsp sea salt
few grinds of black pepper

Egg Wash 
1 large eggs
Coarse or flaky sea salt, for sprinkling

Whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon honey into 2/3 cup warm water and let it stand for a few minutes, until foamy. Mix the wet ingredients with a whisk, then add the salt and flour. Mix everything together with a wooden spoon until the dough starts to come together. Turn the mixture out onto a floured counter, and knead for 5 to 10 minutes, until a smooth and elastic dough is formed. Place dough in a large, clean, oiled bowl and let rise for 1 hour.

In a small saucepan, combine the figs, zest, 1/2 cup water, juice, salt, and a few grinds of black peper. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the figs are soft and tender, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat, and let cool to lukewarm. Process fig mixture in a food processor until it resembles a fine paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Set aside to cool.

After your dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured counter and divide it in half. Roll the first half of the dough into a wide and totally imperfect rectangle (really, the shape doesn’t matter). Spread half the fig filling evenly over the dough, stopping short of the edge. Roll the dough into a long, tight log, trapping the filling within. Then gently stretch the log as wide as feels comfortable (I take mine to my max counter width, a pathetic three feet), and divide it in half. Repeat with remaining dough and fig filling.

*Note: Deb has some great pictures of how exactly to weave the challah on her page; click the link above to see it. To weave: Arrange two ropes in each direction, perpendicular to each other, like a tight tic-tac-toe board. Weave them so that one side is over, and the other is under, where they meet. So, now you’ve got an eight-legged woven-headed octopus. Take the four legs that come from underneath the center and move the leg to their right — i.e., jumping it. Take the legs that were on the right and, again, jump each over the leg before, this time to the left. If you have extra length in your ropes, you can repeat these left-right jumps until you run out of rope. Tuck the corners or odd bumps under the dough with the sides of your hands to form a round.

Transfer the dough to a parchment-cover heavy baking sheet. Beat egg until smooth, and brush over challah. Let challah rise for another hour, but 45 minutes into this rise, preheat your oven to 375°F.

Before baking, brush loaf one more time with egg wash and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake in middle of oven for 35 to 40 minutes. It should be beautifully bronzed; if yours starts getting too dark too quickly, cover it with foil for the remainder of the baking time. Be sure the center of your loaf is well baked! Insert a knife in the center to make sure that no dough is still sticking to it. 
Cool the loaf. To serve, slice (or rip apart) and drizzle with honey.

*Piper's architecture cohort has expanded on the typical "Holla!/Challah!" pun to include jokes along the lines of "Happy Challahdays!" This is why they keep the architecture students locked up all by themselves in a distant studio.