Challa!

 Here is the thing, bread is kind of my worst enemy. We are becoming friends, but there are a lot of problems to get over first.  We are getting there, and some day, we will be best friends.  Right now I have made friends with Baguettes, french bread, and now challah.  What is challah?  Well first off I think it's most popular as a Jewish bread.  The straight Challah, below, is eaten year 'round, mostly on the Jewish Sabbath.  The round challah over there has raisins added to it and is mostly eaten on New Years and other special holidays.  It's also know as egg bread because it uses so many eggs, and also has an egg wash over the top for a thin crunchy crust. However, I came across challah in my search for Polish food that didn't involve meat or blood pudding.  :P
My ward was putting on a party where we were supposed to dress in clothes of our heritage, and bring traditional native foods.  As I started thinking of what to make I was trying to decide between Polish food and Jewish food.  My ancestors are Polish Jews, see?  I decided on Polish since I haven't ever made any polish food before, but I have done Jewish food.  All the recipes I found had tons of grease, and meat, and blood.  :P  I'm not vegan or anything, but blood pudding just makes me sick to think about, and making sausage for a large group, like 40-50 people, would be a lot of money.  Then I wound this bread and thought it looked fun.  As I researched the bread I found out it's a Jewish tradition and there you go, perfect, a Polish, Jewish bread.  It took me most of the day to make, mostly because I had so many other things happen, a few emergencies here and there and the bread was put in the fridge til I could get to it again.  The recipe I found on http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/09/best-challah-egg-bread/ had really great directions for making the bread, but I was super confused about the braiding part, I've never been good at braiding, so I made up my own braid.  I think it turned out pretty well.
I had TONS of compliments on the bread.  It really is a very pretty bread, it's not too hard to make and it only takes about 3-4 hours, as long as you don't have emergencies to take care of.  :)  The taste was also excellent!  It even passes the picky little brother test.  :)  Give it a try if your feeling adventurous, you will be glad you did.