Braided Easter Bread

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Have you seen the gorgeous braided easter bread and wanted to try making it, but thought it looked too complicated or takes too much time to make?

Today I’m going to share with you how easy an Easter bread braid is to make so that you can wow everyone at the Easter table!

This is a recipe that not only looks good, but tastes good too! The bread is sweet and has almost the same flavor and consistency of a cinnamon roll (minus the cinnamon and frosting).

Every Easter we have large family dinner with my family where we all make something to bring, and this is definitely what I’ll be bringing this year!

Warning: this bread is very addicting.

Braided Easter Bread Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup sugar
2 packages active dry yeast
1 tsp. salt
6 – 6 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups milk
6 Tbsp. butter, cut into cubes
4 eggs
4-5 hard-boiled eggs
Oil
2 Tbsp. water

DIRECTIONS:

STEP 1. Mix the sugar, yeast, salt, and 2 cups of flour in a large bowl. I used my metal Kitchen Aid bowl and my machine in the next few steps to save time and effort.

For this recipe I used Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached All Purpose White Flour. It’s freshly milled from organic hard red wheat, and isn’t enriched with any additives. This high protein flour is used by professional bakers and is perfect for creating light and airy baked goods as well as textured loaves of bread. Simply stated, this flour gave my bread an amazing texture and I highly recommend using it in any recipe that calls for flour.

STEP 2. Heat milk and butter to 125 degrees in a small saucepan, then add to dry ingredients. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add 3 eggs, then beat on high for 2 minutes. Add flour until a soft dough is formed. The dough will be sticky.

STEP 3. For this next step you have 2 choices. You can knead the bread by hand until it’s smoth and elastic for about 8 minutes, or you can leave it in your stand mixer and let the dough hoook knead the dough for about 5 minutes. I’m sure you can guess which option I went with. 😉

STEP 4. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled for 45 minutes. If you want to use colored eggs in your bread, now is the time to color them, while the dough is rising.

I baked my bread with plain white eggs, but I almost used these pretty marbled Easter eggs I made. I switched out the white eggs for the marbled, but ended up switching it back to white because I like the simplicity of how it looked.

I didn’t hard-boil my eggs because I wanted to see if they cooked all the way in the oven, but they did not. Just a heads up if any of you wanted to try that too! I would definitely hard boil them first if you plan on eating the eggs.

STEP 5. Punch down the dough that has risen, and split into 3 pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a rope that is 24″ long, then make a long braid with the pieces. Place the bread braid on a greased baking sheet and pinch the ends together to make a ring. I stretched my ring out a little from the middle so that there would be a bigger hole in the middle once it was cooked.

STEP 6. Coat the hard-boiled eggs with a little oil, then tuck inside the dough ropes. Cover the whole thing with a dish towel and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

STEP 7. Whisk together the last egg and 2 Tbsp. of water. Brush the egg wash over the dough, avoiding the eggs. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the bread is a nice golden brown. This recipe was adapted from Taste of Home.

I placed my braided Easter bread on a cooling rack and served warm, but you could also make this ahead of time.

This braided Easter bread was such a treat. I hope you give it a try! It’s so soft and light and sweet and is the perfect addition to your Easter meal- or any meal for that matter!