How to make Delicious Easter Bread

Hey , I'm John Connell .

And today on Preppy kitchen , we're making a show stopping delicious Easter bread .

So let's get started .

First off , I'm adding one cup of whole milk into a small bowl .

Here you go , one teaspoon of sugar .

This will give our yeast a head start .

But yeast love a warm environment to wake up in .

So I'm gonna microwave this until it gets to about 100 degrees .

My milk is nice and warm .

So says my javelin .

I love this guy .

I'm gonna add in two and a quarter teaspoons or one package of active dry yeast .

Give it a mix and we're gonna set this aside for 5 to 7 minutes or until it is frothy and alive .

If it doesn't froth up , your yeast is old or died , you gotta start over again because your bread will not rise while that's frothing .

I'm gonna set that aside .

Grab your stand mix or a bowl , the dough hook attachment .

You could also use a hand mixer with those little dough spirals and we're gonna get our dry ingredients all together .

We want 4.5 cups or 540 g of all purpose flour into the bowl of our stand mixer as well as half a cup of sugar .

It will give us some sweetness and help soften the dough as well .

It will give it a wonderful soft texture .

I'm also adding in two teaspoons of salt .

So it will give us some contrast .

This bread , by the way , reminds me so much of Greek Easter bread .

I'm part Greek and um one of our family traditions was making uh which is a similar type of enriched wonderful dough .

It has a different spice profile and it has these red eggs .

There's this whole tradition of like the the kids at the table .

And Easter for Greek Easter cracking red like the eggs .

The whole thing basically , you have to crack someone else's egg without yours cracking .

It's a hard boiled egg .

So it's all in how you hold it memories .

All right .

Gonna give this a whisk just to distribute that sugar and oh , look at this .

My yeast is very happy .

Take a look .

It's nice and foamy .

Right now .

I'm gonna add the yeast mixture into my dry ingredients and into the same bowl .

I'm gonna crack my my eggs .

I want two large room temperature eggs .

And if you take a look at my little wooden carrier , you see , I have some white eggs too .

These white eggs are for the decoration on top .

So don't crack your white eggs .

Give your eggs a light beat just wanna break the yolks up , add those in as well .

And I'm gonna let my mixer do all the work .

So grab your mixer , get a dough hook and we're gonna start turning this dough out .

We're gonna add this onto our mixer along with the dough hook and mix on low for about five minutes until you have a soft , wonderful dough forming .

But it's not gonna be ready because there's a ton of butter to add in here and it's gonna make it so rich and amazing .

And by the way , I looked at , I needed to know all the details for the , the red egg game I played as a child .

Well , it's called , which means clinking together .

You play it with cooking a a .

So basically you dye the eggs red , you use onion skins if you want , but like no one does that anymore .

And then you hold your egg like this , give it a crack .

And the whole thing is you have to hold it in such a way that the egg has uniform pressure from your hands so that it can withstand a tap .

If they tap your egg and your egg cracks , you lose and they win and vice versa the other way around .

But you go around the table and everyone like has a crack at it and the winner , we all of a sudden got bragging lights , but it was really fun .

After about five minutes , you can see my dough has come together .

It's soft , looks pretty good .

Actually doesn't seem like it's quite there because it rips , but we're not done yet .

So it doesn't matter .

I want 76 g or a third of a cup of room temperature butter .

So I can press my finger in .

It will depress really easily .

I'm gonna cut this into small pieces and plop it in and it'll get incorporated into the dough .

I'm adding the butter about a table spin at a time .

You want to give it some time to incorporate .

But let me tell you something , it's gonna be a little bit annoying just because the butter is gonna want to form like this giant plate at the bottom , like a plate of butter on top of your dough .

So every once in a while you can take the dough off the hook , plop a little piece right in the middle and continue mixing just like that .

So adding the butter in like this helps it like it really inhibits those gluten proteins from forming strong bonds and it gives you again a softer bread .

So adding a sugar , softer bread , adding the butter , softer bread and you'll find the bread also has like a stretchier , like more loose texture .

It's really pleasant on the mouth .

If this seems like a lot of work , it isn't .

And it's so much easier than doing it by hand .

This is an Easter bread recipe , but you can make it any time of year .

Maybe just skip the eggs and you'll have some beautiful delicious bread on your table and you don't have to have this as a wreath shape .

It could be braided into one or two big loaves .

Oh , look at this .

Ok .

It makes it for just a little bit more .

Then I'll show you the texture .

Right about 10 minutes later .

I wanna show you this dough .

It's not sticking to my fingers .

It's tacky though , meaning it feels sticky and it's stretchy .

Look at that stretch .

Do you see this ?

Nice and stretchy ?

Not tearing .

My mixer is done .

Grab a big bowl and a little bit of oil and grease it up so it comes out really easily .

You could have reused this bowl .

Mm But this dough is so rich that it kind of sticks a lot .

So a greased bowl is a best practice unless you've had it up to here with dishes .

In which case you can let the dough rise in here .

Just do what I'm doing and scrape all the dough down to the bottom so it can release a little bit more easily .

And by the way , you don't need egg dye for this .

You don't have to get a whole set .

I'm showing you how to do it with food coloring at home .

Cover this up and I'll let it rise in a nice warm cozy place for 1.5 to 2 hours .

This is of course a rich dough .

It's basically brioche and it needs to have all that time to kind of fight against the things that make it delicious .

So they can rise up and have a nice structure .

And you go while my dough is rising , I'm making some easy dyed eggs to top this bread off with .

So you want hot water and you should have white vinegar .

Someone forgot to buy that .

So instead I have rice wine vinegar but it'll work just fine .

Any kind of light vinegar is great because it's an acid and you want about a tablespoon of vinegar per half cup of water .

The vinegar is an acid .

It will kind of like eat away at the um marble countertop , you're working on .

So be careful but it'll also eat away at the shell of your egg .

Oh These are all raw .

So be careful right now .

I'm gonna do two colors , soft pink and baby blue .

This is gel food coloring which is super concentrated .

If you're using the kind to get at the supermarket , uh you want to add some more in the nice thing is if you use too much dye , it'll be OK .

Just have your eggs in for less time .

Little whisk does wonders .

So I'm adding three eggs into each batch .

I don't need that many eggs , but I have a safety in case something bad happens .

So these will die up for about three minutes .

However , keep an eye on them because some stuff will happen pretty quickly .

So be careful .

Don't let them get too bright , beautiful blue eggs .

My fingertips a little bit blue , but that's ok .

The pink ones are a bit of a surprise .

You can let me know in the comments if you think this looks good or if you're sad for me .

So they have like a neat airbrushed effect to them .

So I kind of actually really like it .

About two hours later , our dough has dramatically risen up .

So right now we're gonna punch this down , punch , punch , punch , punch , punch and this gets turned out onto a lightly floured surface and I'm about to conquer my fears of braiding bread .

All right , stretch this into a bar .

I'm going to divide this into three equal pieces and now we roll these into like a 28 inch long piece .

So it's gonna be like a bit of rolling and stretching 28 inches seems very long , but it's doable .

It stretches , it's really more stretching than rolling .

If you can do those complex bread braids or a plate .

Congratulations .

Tell me your secrets .

I want to know them all because my brain does not work that way .

3 28 inch long ropes .

Now we're gonna braid these together .

So here's the deal .

Tie the ends together just like this .

And now how does this go ?

Oh boy , I can do it one .

Wait , I did it wrong 1234 .

Right ?

One 12341234 .

Ok .

That's pretty good .

Oh my gosh .

Major panic .

So now we're gonna transfer this onto a sheet of parchment paper carefully and make a beautiful wreath shaped .

I don't care how good you are .

There's gonna be an unattractive little bit where it's joined .

That is where the egg goes .

That's the magic .

My braid looks like a pretty nice wreath braid .

Um Now I'm gonna grab my eggs and place those strategically .

So you wanna have one egg covering that joint that doesn't look so great .

And then just gonna place those in the nooks like this and they go on sideways .

Now our breads in a rice for about half an hour to puff up .

You might want to nudge those eggs back down after that second rise and set that oven to 3 50 .

So it's nice and warm .

When we come back , we're gonna get one more beautiful thing and then they go into the oven after that second rise .

Looks puffed up and beautiful .

I'm gonna give this a really quick egg wash just so it's nice and golden .

Try and steer clear of the eggs because they'll bleed and look kind of weird .

Finishing it off with a smattering of sprinkles .

It looks so cute and this is ready to go into the oven 3 50 for 25 to 30 minutes or until it's golden brown .

Let your Easter bread .

Cool .

Give it a cut and look at this amazingness .

It smells divine .

Pillowy , soft , perfectly sweet and with a little bit of butter , it might just be perfection .

I hope you had a chance to make this recipe .

And if you like this video , check out my Easter playlist .