Molly yeh

Cooking With Christie: Pretzel Challah Buns

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Inspiration: One of my new-to-me favorite cooking shows is Girl Meets Farm. So much so that when I spotted one of Molly Yeh’s cookbooks on the shelf of my local bookshop, I decided to make a purchase. 

Within Molly On The Range was Yeh’s challah bread recipe. 

However, the enclosed recipe makes two loaves — which is a lot of bread! Undoubtedly, aware that these loaves are huge, Yeh also offers alternate ways of utilizing this base dough — including prezel buns. Needing more than the line of instructions given in the book, I quickly located Yeh’s recipe here.

And I must admit, though these bakes looked intimidating to make, once you overcome that trepidation, they are pretty straightforward. And, despite my amateurish scoring skills, these buns turned out great!

Learn From My Mistake: This recipe calls for baked baking soda, which is easy to make. However, in this form, it can (and did for me) easily irritate the skin with very little contact. 

Moreover, next time a recipe calls for baked baking soda, I will need to wear a mask while transferring it into a container, measuring it out, and before adding my wet ingredients into a mix. Since no matter how careful I was, the fine powder went airborne and irritated my lungs as well.

Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: I think Lucy Eyelesbarrow, from the Miss Marple mystery 4.50 From Paddington, would whip up this recipe (with far more finesse than I) for one of her clients. As the challah base recipe can yield at least nine different bakes, allowing Lucy to dazzle her clients with a variety of tasty treats with minimal effort! 

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Intimidation

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Inspiration: Despite shaping bread dough nearly every single week of the year, apparently, my brain doesn’t consider the basic cylinder I place in a loaf pan a shape. (My little grey cells can be real jerks sometimes.) Due to this perception, I’ve shied away from challah’s braided form for years, despite finding this style of bread intriguing.

Enter Girl Meets Farm.

I really enjoy watching and listening to Molly Yeh’s enthusiasm for food on her aforementioned television show. So, upon locating one of Yeh’s cookbooks on the shelves of my local indie bookshop, I immediately flipped it open….And spied a recipe for Pimento Cheese Babka. (Yes, this too is a shaped loaf, but I’m willing to try A LOT if there’s melted cheese in my future.)

What I didn’t realize, until after the book came home with me, was this savory take on babka was based on Yeh’s Basic Challah recipe. Moreover, in Molly On The Range, Yeh’s included six other variants above and beyond the babka. 

Figuring: If that there are that many different things you can do with a single recipe — it seemed reasonable to assume Yeh’s challah was probably a pretty forgiving dough. So on a recent random Monday, I screwed up my courage and gave this Challah recipe a whirl. 

Upon rereading the instructions on that grey morning, I noticed a line I had skimmed past in previous perusals — Yeh’s instructions on how to make the dough one day and bake it the next. A feature I really appreciate in any recipe.

Look mom, I did a thing!

How did the braided loaves turn out? I think the dough was a touch overproofed, as the plaits on my first loaf tore slightly whilst baking. Though, in retrospect, that could’ve been due to panically pulling the loaf from the oven five minutes after it hit the heat to apply the forgotten egg wash. And I completely spaced sprinkling the flaky sea salt called for onto said wash on both loaves.

All that being said, for a first try, my challah turned out great! Especially when topped with melted cheese and dipped in tomato soup!

I would highly recommend Molly Yeh’s cookbook, Molly On The Range. Above and beyond being well laid out, Yeh’s instructions are straightforward, clear, and broken up into sensible steps. Moreover, Yeh’s introductions to each recipe are generally brief and contribute to the overall understanding of the dish (and are often funny). 

Although you can find many of Yeh’s recipes online, the book provides better context and is easier to follow (for me at least) than their Food Network website counterparts.

Another variation on Yeh’s Basic Challah recipe!

Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: I can easily imagine Miss Marple, Tuppence, or Lucy Eyelesbarrow whipping up this bread to serve at a fete or feast with friends — as not only does the plaits look impressive but, apparently, it’s easy to impart complex flavors via this loaf to complement other dishes being served as well!

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Tie-Dye Cookies

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Inspiration: On a random Saturday morning, whilst puttering around the house, I had The Food Network playing in the background and on popped the show Girl Meets Farm. Now, I must admit, I wasn’t paying particular attention to Molly Yeh….Until she started talking about making tie-dye cookies.

That perked my ears right up.

Watching her method, I decided they looked pretty easy, so I gave them a go.

From the Office of Me to You: Choose your food coloring gels with care. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a dull and potentially colorless bake!

Whereupon I learned not all gel food coloring brands are created equal. In the pic above, the basic cookie color was initially green. However, the organic dye I used disappeared entirely during the bake. An outcome the manufacturers failed to mention might happen on the back of the box.

I then discovered that the purple, produced by a different company, would fade a bit if the oven temperature exceeded 350 degrees. Prewarned, I added loads more food coloring than I usually would to counter the fading – as these cookies bake at 375 degrees.

(And usually is a relative term here, as this is the first time I’ve worked with food dyes in…..Well, the last time I can recall was in grade school for a rainbow cake for a carnival cake walk. I’m sure I’ve used it since then, but darned if I can remember when.)

The orange, the only non-natural dye of the lot, turned out perfectly.

In any case, as an eggless cookie, they turned out okay. I think these are better when eaten warm. And they are HUGE, which my taste testers found off-putting. So next time, rather than eyeballing the amount of dough in each cookie (as instructed), I will weigh each piece of colored dough and cut the size by half.

Christie: I can see these cookies being a popular holiday treat in the early days of Christie’s detectives’ careers. As eggs, amongst many other kitchen staples, were rationed during and after the Great Wars.