Vegan Chocolate Stripy Challah

 Fully vegan chocolate stripy challah, or chałka  [read: how-kha], in Polish.

Originally made with lots of eggs for an enriched dough. Here that distinctive soft and stringy texture comes from laminating dough, which was made using water roux [tangzhong] with tiny addition of vegan butter. 

It is so good, that the two of us had almost the whole of challah in one go. Simply with coconut yogurt and quickly made raspberry coulis. 

There are couple geeky terms above, for anyone who is not familiar with them.

Nothing to worry about as I am explaining them right now:

**laminating dough - this is nothing more then simply folding the dough in half  [over a slab of cold butter most of the time] and rolling it out to the previous size. Then cut in half again and rolled out to the previous size. Few times this needs to be repeated for the desired texture. Most of the time this technic is used for making puff pastry [the one to make croissants]. 

Here the white dough is laminated using the cacao dough, to create that stripy zebra-like texture. 

**water roux - this is nothing more then a water+flour custard. And this gluey addition brings the normal yeast bread to another level. 

I remember that back in Poland, many, many years ago, we used to it chałka every day. With jam and butter, and our morning coffee 😍

Long are those days gone... I was looking for a perfect dough texture for a while now, mixing different ingredients, adding different types of oil, butter, milk... This recipe is finally the answer to my chałka problems 😁

So, let's make it.

First water roux:

45g of bread flour

240ml water 

mix it well in a small cooking pot and cook, stirring all the time, until you get a thick custard [couple of minutes]. Let it cool completely before using.

Now the main dough:

440g bread flour 

100ml water - room temperature;

45ml plant milk [soy, almond, coconut...all good]- room temperature;

30g vegan butter [needs to be at room temperature to incorporate it well into the dough];

3g [= half of a sachet] of dried yeast;

good pinch of salt for flavour;

vanilla for flavour, if using;

If using mixer add all the ingredients + cooled down water roux into the bowl and mix/kneed well for about 5-7 minutes. or kneed for about 10 minutes by hand. 

Now divide the dough into 2 pieces: 1/3 + 2/3. Place the 2/3 piece in a greased bowl, cover and leave it to double it's size. Normally about 2 hours.

To your smaller, 1/3 piece dough, add:

2 Tbsp cacao

1 Tbsp water [so the dough is not too dry, after adding taco powder].

Kneed until all cacao is incorporated fully into the dough. Place the cacao dough in a greased bowl, cover and leave until double in size. 

Now the fun part! 

Roll out/stretch by hands white dough to roughly 25x30cm rectangle. 

Roll out/stretch by hands brown dough to roughly 25x15cm rectangle.

Place brown dough over white dough like so:

fold the white dough over brown, roll it out to 25x30 rectangle again. Cut the dough in half [across the stripes]. Place one half on top of another, roll it out again. 

Cut in half again, and roll it out again.

Cut in half again, and roll it out again.

😎

Now cut the dough into 3 long stripes 

and make a plait/braid. 

Leave it, covered, to rest and rise for another 1-2 hours.

Preheat your oven to 175C and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Let it cool down before serving it with any favourite jam, yogurt, butter....

I hope you'll love it as much as we do! 

Enjoy!

Kasia 💛💛