Challah with Friends

This weekend we had an awesome visit with my friends Aimee, Lucy and her husband, Chris.  I didn’t expect the weekend to be as relaxing or wonderful as it turned out to be, but I keep thinking about the past 48 hours and smiling.  Obviously friends who come bearing craft beer, chocolate covered blueberries and peach iced tea tea bags are the best kinds of friends, but seeing as the only time Brian and I had met Chris was at his wedding to Lucy, we were lucky to all get along as well as we did.  We played tons of board games, enjoyed good food (both at home and at restaurants), took a trip to our CSA and talked about geek and internet culture.  Oh, and we baked Smitten Kitchen’s Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah. (Interestingly enough, Lucy and I made challah last time she visited.  Apparently it’s our thing.)

As we expected, this Smitten Kitchen recipe was awesome. I’m sure that having three of us working on the bread together helped, but we didn’t find this recipe hard to make.  Though this recipe has multiple parts, none of the parts are difficult (we used the stand mixer variation for making the dough) and even creating the beautifully shaped loaf wasn’t tricky.  Thank goodness for a recipe with very clear directions.  Special thanks, as always, to Brian who took care of the final egg wash and baking while I took our guests to see the farm.  This loaf of challah is already gone (there were five of us and it made an awesome gaming snack), but I’m really looking forward to making it again.  I am dying to try out different varieties of dried fruit for the filling.