Sweet Easter Bread Recipe with raisins

Sweet Easter Bread Recipe with raisins

Sweet Easter Bread Recipe, to help you make the best sweet raisin braided bread filled with warm aroma of spices and lots of juicy raisins.

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Prep Time 15

Cook Time 35

Proofing Time 2 30

Total Time 3 20

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American, Italian

Servings Sweet Easter Bread

Ingredients

For the Bread Dough

357 g Flour or 2 3/4 cup
210 ml Warm water or 1 cup-2 tbsp
3 g Instant yeast 1 tsp(Active dry yeast 1 and 1/4 tsp)
5.9 g Salt or 1 tsp
42.6 g Butter or 3 tbsp(very soft or melted)
32 g Sugar or 2 1/2 tbsp or more according to your preference

For the filling

80-90 g Raisins around 1/2 cup
1 Orange zest of 1 Orange
1/2 tsp Cinnamon Powder (optional)
1/4 tsp Nutmeg Powder (optional)

For the Icing

85 g Powdered Sugar around 3/4 cup
1/2 tsp Vanilla Sugar or Extract
15-30 ml Milk (according to how thin or thick you want your icing to be)1-2 tbsp

Instructions

Prepare the dough

Into a bowl, add in the lukewarm water, sugar, salt, yeast and stir to dissolve the ingredients in water.
Add in the very soft or melted butter.
Add the flour into this.
Stir and combine.
Make sure there are no dry patches left behind.
Transfer the dough on to a clean work surface. Knead the dough until the dough become soft and elastic.

First Proofing

Place the dough ball in a bowl.
Cover and let the dough rise in a warm environment for 1 hour.

Divide and Shape the dough

After One hour of rising, our dough has risen slightly.
Now incorporate the raisins and spices into the dough.If you want, you can add dried cranberries, candied peels or chocolate chips.
I just mixed raisins, Zest of one orange, freshly ground nutmeg and some cinnamon powder.This will add a nice aroma to our Sweet Easter Bread.
Pull the dough from sides of bowl and fold it into the center. Thus we can incorporate the raisins into the dough and simultaneously can deflate the dough.
Divide the Raisin bread dough
Divide the dough into three equal parts.
To make beautiful braided raisin bread, use a kitchen scale and divide the dough into three equal parts.
Flatten the dough and then tuck in the edges towards the center and shape into round balls.
Once you form three dough balls ,cover it and leave it for 8-10 minutes.
This will give some time for the dough to relax and you will find it easy to shape them.
Shape the Raisin sweet bread dough
Flatten each of the dough ball flat and then roll it like we roll a jelly roll and keep it aside(around 15 cm long).
Once you finish three of them , take the first one that we shaped and then roll it out into thin long rope of approximately 60 cm long.
Place the three ropes parallel to each other and then braid the raisin bread.
Take the one on right side and place over and to the middle.Then take right one place it over and to the middle and keep on repeating.
Join the both ends.
Place the Sweet Raisin Ring Bread on to a parchment lined baking tray.

Final Rising

Let the sweet raisin ring bread dough sit and rise in warm environment for 80-90 minutes.
As this sweet raisin Easter bread contain more sugar, butter and raisins, it takes a little longer than regular breads to rise.
Give the Easter raisin bread a good egg wash so that they will look golden brown with a shine on top after baking.
We can prepare the egg wash by lightly beating an egg.

Bake the Sweet Easter Bread

Bake the Easter bread at 350 F or 180 C preheated oven for 34-36 minutes.
After baking you will get beautiful, golden brown, Sweet Raisin Braided Bread.
It smells amazing, the smell of joy and happiness, the smell of Christmas and Easter!
Top it with some icing and serve!

Video

Notes

While rolling and elongating the dough strands, make sure the work surface is clean. If there is dust on the surface, then you will find it difficult to roll and elongate the dough.

While braiding bread, make sure you dust the surface of dough so that they will not stick to each other and that will make the braiding easy.

To make the braided bread look more pretty, make sure you braid till the ends.

Keyword raisin bread for easter, sweet bread for easter, sweet easter bread

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