How to make an Easter Sweet Bread!

This pretty Braided Sweet Bread is perfect for Easter Morning !                                                  

When the kids were growing up they called this “Easter Egg bread!” I made this every year for Easter Sunday.  It takes a little bit of time to make but it’s so worth it. I love the taste of the cinnamon in this sweet dough and the yummy glaze on it, and I know you will too!

Recipe:

In a large mixing bowl stir together:

3 Tbsp dry Yeast
3/4 cup white cane Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Salt
2  cups Bread flour – (all-purpose flour works too, but I prefer bread flour here) Next in a pan, I warm the below milk and then stir in the butter and last the eggs.
2 1/2 cups warmed milk 
3/4 cup butter -softened
2 Eggs

Next I add the warm mixture (not HOT, or you’ll kill your yeast) into the mixing bowl of dry ingredients and I beat it on low until its all mixed together nicely. I use my stand mixer for this with just my regular beaters as you would for cookie dough. 

Now, I switch to my dough hook and knead in:
2 cups  hardwhite wheat flour (you can use all-purpose white flour, I just like the health benefits)
2 tsp  Cinnamon
Then as its kneading in mixer with dough hook, I add upto
3 – 4 cups more of Bread flour, as needed to give you a slightly sticky dough, not dry but a nice smooth but slightly sticky dough.   

Cover your bowl now and Let the dough rise in the bowl until its doubled. When its nice and risen punch down, dump it on the counter and cut it in half, so you have 2 pcs. This makes 2 braids or one large circle braid or one braid and a pan of bunny buns:) You decide!

Using half the dough at a time, take 1 half now and cut it into 3 pieces. As shown above. Next roll each of 3 pieces into a long rope about 15″  long, your rope pcs are how long your bread braid will end up being.

This part really is quite easy, as next you just take the 3 ropes of dough and simply braid them together.

Lay the braid onto a greased cookie sheet. Push in 3-4 raw eggs to bake an impression in the bread (you’ll change them out for the decorated eggs later).  Next, Cover your braid with a towel and let it rise one more time, until puffy and light, about 20-30 minutes. 

Last before baking I take 1 egg, whisk it well with 1 Tablespoon water and I brush it all over the braid, so it will have a golden sheen after its baked. (you don’t have to brush it with egg).  Now bake this nicely risen braid with the uncolored eggs in place, at 350 for 20 min or until done. Don’t over-bake it, you want a moist braid. After its baked, remove the baked eggs and discard. 

Then Repeat the steps for the other half of dough, making two bread braids or  you can use the other half of the dough for Cinnamon Rolls or make some cute bunny buns 🙂  Your kids will surly love to help you roll some of these fun little fella’s out! 

 As mentioned, the braid can also be shaped into a circle like above, instead of a long braid and it will be like a braided wreath, which is very pretty with decorated eggs also.  

After bread is baked and before its completely cool brush top of bread with butter to keep the crust soft , then cool completely.  I don’t glaze it or put the colored eggs in place until the day I’m serving it, as the hardboiled decorated eggs need to stay refrigerated until serving time.

Just before serving, Glaze the bread with a simple powder sugar and water glaze and then place your colorful decorated eggs into the egg places on the bread. 

I decorated our Jesus eggs by using letter stickers from my scrapbooking supplies and an egg dye kit from the grocery store. Hard boil your eggs as normal and let them cool.  Pat your eggs with a paper towel to Be sure your eggs are completely dry, (thats the important part) so stickers will stick good to the shells.  Then I used the letters J E S U S on each egg . Then dip eggs in dye cups according to package directions.  After eggs are dyed the colors we like, I again let them set on paper towel and let dry a few minutes, before removing the letter stickers . My kids would get very creative and often even add more details to their dyed eggs using watercolor and food safe markers as well as even dipping a paint brush into the dye cups and painting on poka-dots and more.

 

Decorating and dying eggs is another whole day of fun of course and we always do eggs a day or two ahead of time. My kids always loved dying eggs each year at Easter time to eat and put in the pretty Easter Egg Bread.   I think You’ll enjoy this funny family story that happened one year when we decorated eggs 🙂

I had hardboiled 24 eggs and knew exactly how many I had.  All 6 kids were excited and I told them as they all hovered around the table eagerly, each child could dip and decorate 4 eggs!  All was going well, no spills, every one was having a great time, dipping, laughing, and double dipping eggs into colors and I slowly began putting their finished dried, little works of art into my cartons, to store them back in the frig. Well I realized that I had MORE than 24 eggs!  Hmmmm, I said, children why are there tooo many eggs filling more than my 2 empty cartons?  As I looked around the table most were just shaking there head and raising there shoulders with that “I don’t know look” ……except one!  Child number 4, dear daughter, said “well um, I just wanted to decorate a few more Mom!” So, what she had done, without me seeing her, was she had slipped over to the frig and kept grabbing one more, one more, of the NOT hardboiled eggs, so that she could keep dying alllll her ideas!  I had to laugh 🙂   It was interesting cracking and eating our hard (and not so hard) boiled eggs that Easter.  And whats funny now is, some 20 years later, she’s all grown and married, she ended up going to culinary school, bakes amazing beautiful cakes, has done incredible wedding cakes, cookies and more and even painted some beautiful oil paintings.  That artistic talent and love for food and colors was part of her way back!   So I always laugh now, whenever we dye eggs together! 

 As for the rest of the story, what really makes me chuckle is …..you see we had a coop full of hens then, so we always had nearly 5 doz eggs on hand at a given time …buuut very few white ones! So she had to reeeally loook for the white eggs, to slip onto the table for dying “one more” because most our eggs were brown, and the kids knew brown eggs DON’T DYE PRETTY! 

This leftover sweet bread with a hardboiled 🙂 egg makes great leftovers! 

Have a delightful week and take time to make some memories with your kiddos cooking or baking or making fun things for spring.

Have a Lovely Easter !