- Hey, I'm John Kanell,
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-ish 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 a hundred degrees.
My milk is nice and warm so it says my javelin.
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 five to seven 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 mixer, 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 four and a half cups or 540 grams
of all-purpose flour into the bowl of our stand mixer.
As well as half a cup of sugar.
This will give us some sweetness
and help soften the dough as well.
It'll give it a wonderful soft texture.
I'm also adding in two teaspoons of salt.
This will give us some contrast.
This bread, by the way,
reminds me so much of Greek Easter bread.
I'm part Greek.
And one of our family traditions was making tsoureki,
which is a similar type of enriched wonderful dough.
It has a different spice profile and it has these red eggs.
And there's this whole tradition of like,
the kids at the table for Easter, for Greek Easter,
cracking red, like the eggs.
It's a whole thing.
(upbeat music)
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 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 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 up,
I needed to know all the details
for the the red egg game I played as a child.
Well, it's called tsougrisma,
which means clinking together.
You play it with kokkina avga.
So basically you dye the eggs red.
You can 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 always just got bragging rights.
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 'cause it rips,
but we're not done yet, so it doesn't matter.
I want 76 grams or a third of a cup
of room temperature butter.
So I could press my finger in, it'll 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 tablespoon at a time.
You wanna give it some time to incorporate,
but let me tell you something.
It's gonna be a little bit annoying,
just because the butter's gonna wanna like 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
out 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 add in the sugar, softer bread.
Add in the butter, softer bread.
And you'll find the bread also has like a stretchier,
like more loose texture that'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.
Ooh, look at this dough.
Okay, I'm gonna mix it for just a little bit more.
Then I'll show you the texture.
All 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 mixers done.
Grab a big bowl and a little bit of oil.
I'm gonna 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 one and a half to two 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 it can rise up and have an nice structure.
In you go.
While my doughs 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 a rice wine vinegar,
but it'll work just fine.
Any kinda light vinegars great 'cause it's an acid.
And you want about a tablespoon of vinegar
per half cup of water.
The vinegar is an acid, it'll kinda like eat away
at the marble countertop you're working on.
So be careful.
But it'll also eat away at the shell of your egg.
Ooh, these are all raw, so be careful.
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 you get at the supermarket,
you'll wanna add some more in.
The nice thing is if you use too much dye, it'll be okay.
Just have your eggs in for less time.
A 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 dye 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 okay.
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 airbrush effect to them,
so I kinda actually 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 gonna 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.
See, 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 wanna know them all
because my brain does not work that way.
Three 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 could do it.
One.
Wait, I did it wrong.
One, two, three, four.
Right?
One.
(buzzer buzzes)
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Okay, 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 shape.
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.
Now I'm gonna grab my eggs and place those strategically.
So you wanna one egg covering that joint
that doesn't look so great.
And then I'm just gonna place those in the nooks like this.
And they go on sideways.
Now our bread's gonna rise
for about half an hour to puff up.
You might wanna nudge those eggs back down
after that second rise.
And set that oven to 350, 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 kinda weird.
Finishing it off with a smattering of sprinkles.
This looks so cute.
And this is ready to go into the oven,
350 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.