Pumpkin Challah

I love everything pumpkin! I also love playing with new challah creations. All it takes is a few tweaks to my staple challah recipe.

I have been on a challah kick and a pumpkin kick lately. Who said pumpkin is reserved just for Fall? Not me! I love pumpkin all year, whether it’s a savory dish like pumpkin soup or pie or sweet like pumpkin ice cream, cake, cookies...I could go on and on.

You can definitely used can pumpkin purée, just make sure it’s one where it’s just pumpkin on the ingredients, not a pie filling that has other ingredients added in. I use pie pumpkins that I roast and purée my own, check out my how to here. 

What you will need:

2 tbsp yeast

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup warm water

1 cup pumpkin purée {make your own here}

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

4-4 1/2 cups flour

Directions: 

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, sugar, water, and pumpkin purée, stir to combine. Add the 2 eggs and mix the eggs with a beater attachment. Then add the oil and mix together again. 

With the mixer on the lowest speed, add flour cup by cup until the dough starts forming a ball and pulling away from the sides of the mixing bowl. At this point, swap out the beater attachment for a dough hook and add the salt and pumpkin pie spice. Keep adding flour cup by cup until the dough is no longer sticky to the touch. In total this should be roughly 4 cups of flour. 

Knead the dough together by hand to make sure everything is incorporated together. 

Place the dough back in the bowl and cover the top of the dough with a thin layer of oil and cover with a wet towel. 

 Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, this should be about an hour, or in the fridge up to 24 hours. 

Punch the dough down and let it rise for another hour. 

At this point, you are ready to form the challahs. I like to do simple 4 strand braids. 

Once all of your challahs are formed, let them rise for an additional half hour, or up to an hour in colder weather. 

Top each challah with egg wash (one egg with a little bit of water) and some pumpkin seeds and cinnamon sugar if you want it sweet. 

Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!