Prepare the Dough
Combine water and two tablespoons sugar with yeast. Allow yeast to proof for five to 10 minutes.
Add the eggs, remaining sugar, honey, and oil, and mix.
Next add half a bag of bread flour and mix to incorporate
Finally add the remainder of the bag and salt and knead until flour is incorporated into the dough. Allow your dough to rest for three to five minutes. This allows the gluten a chance to relax
Begin kneading again on medium speed for approximately five to seven minutes and about 10 minutes by hand.
At this point you can put your dough in a greased bowl or dough bucket covered with a clean kitchen towel and have it rise at room temperature until double in size; or covered with a clean towel and place the bowls in a large enough bag (like an unused and unscented garbage bag); or you can do a slow cold rise in the fridge up to 24 hours. At that point remove from the fridge. Punch down well and allow to come to room temperature before using.
Or you can divide up your Challah dough into balls ( which will become your Challah strands)right after kneading. Place the balls on a greased cookie sheet ( lined with plastic wrap or parchment paper) and cover to rise.
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Cutting recipe in half How many cups of flour would I use if I cut the recipe in half? How many 1 pound loaves would this make?
5 pounds of flour is around 17/18 cups so you would want half of that. This recipe makes 6 regular sized challahs so if you cut it in half it'll yield 3.
Looks beautiful- one side comment My husband recently was preparing a shiur on the varrious minhagim of R"H and informed me that there is strong reasoning to make your round challahs out of one long strand.
The Metzriem used to make their bread out of many strands braided together to symbolize their various gods, so when Bnei Yisroel left Mitrayim, in order to symbolize 1 G-d as their king, they made challah out of i strand rolled up. With time, and being removed from Mitzrayim, we adopted the standard braided challah (which has deep roots in kaballah for the symbolization of 2 "vav"s and 6 strands used). But during the time of year that we are re-anointing our King, we are supposed to go back to the round challah made from one strand.
There is another opinion that the minhag comes from making the challah look like a crown. In that case you can argue that a braided round challah is more crown-like :-)