I wanted to bake some bread for Easter and I wanted it to be beautifully detailed and delicious, it seems I’ve found the perfect recipe! This is a beautifully braided sweet yeast bread, with a chocolate and cinnamon filling.
By the way, if you love braiding bread, here’s another recipe I have of an equally delicious Spiced Pumpkin Braided Bread 😉
This gorgeous bread was created by the super talented Eva Kosmas Flores (#firstweeat), you can find her blog post about it by clicking here. She takes the dreamiest, most beautiful photos too, they inspire me to continue practicing and improving my own technique.
I absolutely loved photographing this bread, it was so darn photogenic! It has to be one of the best looking breads I’ve made. And it wasn’t too tricky to make either, just the braiding part. Before I even made it I knew I wanted to use these little purple flowers to decorate it, it goes so well! Apparently they’re called Limonium. I remember I saw that on the packaging when I bought them but I threw it away and couldn’t remember the name anymore. So I started googling “tiny purple flowers” (haha) and found so many different types except for this one! But I finally went to the store today again and made a point to go look at the lable. Limonium. There. Now you know it too 😀
I followed the recipe exactly the way it says on the instructions and everything turned out great. There are only three observations I’d make (I’ll write them here also so I can see them next time I decide to make this):
- Egg white: when I made the filling, I mixed all the ingredients except for the egg white. I left that sitting separately until it was time to use the filling on the rolled out dough. I just had a feeling it’d be better that way;
- Tight braid: when braiding the bread, try to make it tighter because it slacks a bit in the oven. I would’ve preferred for my loaf to be a bit taller than it was. With a tighter braid that would’ve been possible;
- Fridge overnight: I wanted to bake it in the morning, which means I’d have to make it the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight if I didn’t want to spend my night kneading/proofing/rolling… The recipe didn’t mention anything about that so I left it in the fridge at the point where they were all rolled up with the filling inside, before cutting them lengthwise. I arranged the “snakes” on a baking sheet curving them where they didn’t fit, being careful so they wouldn’t touch each other, covered them with a greased piece of plastic wrap and chilled them overnight. Be careful to not leave a part of them uncovered by the plastic wrap as the fridge will dry out the exposed part! (learn from my mistakes) The next morning I took them out, rolled them a bit, cut ’em lengthwise and braided them while still cold. Then I left it out to proof (prove?) for about 1:30h before I put it in the oven.
And here’s the recipe, which you can find on Eva’s blog Adventures in Cooking.
Chocolate & Cinnamon Braided Bread
Ingredients
Bread dough:
- 1/3 cup whole milk, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons dry yeast
- 4 3/4 cups flour
- 1 cup water, room temperature
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 1 1/2 teaspoons flake sea salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 egg whisked with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash
Chocolate Cinnamon Filling:
- 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (70%)
- 3 ounces butter
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 1 egg white, whisked slightly
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon flake sea salt
Instructions
(these have been altered, check the original and more detailed instructions on Adventures in Cooking)
- For the dough, mix together the milk and yeast – rest for 5 minutes.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the milk mixture, flour, water, orange juice, orange zest, sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and milk at low speed until the dough comes together.
- Add the butter in thirds, mixing well. Knead for about 5 minutes.
- Transfer the dough to a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise for 45 minutes at room temperature.
- For the filling, melt the chocolate and butter, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, egg white, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside to cool.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide it into three equal parts. Pat them out into rough rectangles and place them on a baking sheet dusted with flour. Wrap it in plastic wrap – fridge for 90 minutes.
- Take one of the pieces of dough and roll it out into a rectangle measuring roughly 24 x 8 inches. Spread it with 1/3 of the chocolate mixture, then roll it up starting from the long edge. Cover the roll in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge – 30 minutes. Repeat with the remaining two rectangles. (This is the part where I stopped and put them in the fridge overnight).
- Take one of the cylinders and roll it a bit with your hands, lengthening it until it reaches about 34 inches in length. Cut it in half lengthwise. Repeat with the other two cylinders.
- To form the bread, follow this video tutorial.
- Cover with a greased piece of plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 1 hour out of direct sunlight. (If it’s been in the fridge overnight, let it rise for about 2h).
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Lightly brush the bread with the egg wash and bake it in the oven for 25 minutes. Remove it, cover lightly with foil, and bake for another 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 5 to 10 minutes more, uncovered, to brown a bit more.