Traditional Easter Braided Sweet Bread

Posted by whilehewasout on March 27, 2012 · 18 Comments 

As Easter is approaching I’m sharing with you some of my favourite recipes for this occasion. This sweet bread (or challah, kalács, brioche) is always a hit with everyone I know, consumed either with butter, marmalade, jam, by itself, or even with cooked ham and horseradish (YES!) – everybody has their loved variation. This bread is traditionally on every table in Hungary during the Easter festivities – plain, sprinkled with sesame or poppy seeds, or decorated with bows, coloured eggs. This time I made a plain version, but you may add raisins to the dough, and sprinkle the bread with seeds or kosher salt and decorate to your liking.

Ingredients:

500g flour
7g instant dried yeast
50g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
pinch of salt
250ml whipping cream
2 eggs + 1 white
raisins

1 egg yolk and 1 tbsp of milk for brushing

Preparation:

1. Mix flour and yeast and pour everything in the bowl of a stand mixer. Knead for about 5-7 minutes. My mixer gave up after around 2 minutes, so I continued kneading with my hands. If you are using raisins, add them 2 minutes before finishing the kneading.
2. Form a ball and let the dough rise for 1 hour.
3. Now the fun part, do the braid! I found nice step-by-step instructions for this here:

http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/09/sweet-technique-braiding-challah.html

I made a braid with 4 strings now.
4. Transfer to a baking pan (lined with baking sheet) and let it rise for about 30 mins more.
5. Brush the braid with the mixture of the egg yolk and 1 tbsp milk.

6. Place the bread in pre-heated oven and bake for about 35-40 mins at 190°C, or until golden brown.

Serve with whatever you like! 🙂

Filed under Food, Recipes · Tagged with braided bread, brioche, challah, Easter, Easter in Hungary, kalács