Over the course of Tishrei we went through an awful lot of challah with our holiday meals. I had a chance to experiment with a few time-saving recipes, and wanted to share my findings.

While my all time favorite recipe is from the blog smitten kitchen (this is the one I prepare with my kindergarten class every week), I don’t always have the time to knead by hand and clean up the resulting floury mess, especially during a busy work week (or a week when we have a lot of days off for Yom Tov, for that matter.)

I’ve tried a few different bread machine challah recipes, and have had the best success with this one, which was originally brought to my attention by Minnesota Mamaleh. It uses a lot of egg yolks, but it’s worth it (especially if you are handy with meringue…)

I’ve always been a fan of no-knead bread, and over the holidays I made a few batches of no-knead challah. It’s a completely different beast from the chewy, crusty loaf that Mark Bittman made famous. It’s much more like a cake, and because the dough is so sticky, it’s better suited to pull-apart style loaves than braids. Here’s the recipe I used, substituting canola oil for the butter so it would be pareve. I think using high quality local honey made it extra delicious.

Do you have any other challah shortcuts for getting fresh baked bread onto your shabbat table? Do share.