Braided Bread

This is one of the most delicious breads I have made. The prefect amount of salty and sweet.

What you will need:

Bread Ingredients

1/4 cup of warm water
1 1/2 cup of milk at room temperature
1 packet of yeast (2 1/4 teaspoon)
4 tablespoons of melted butter
1/2 cup of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
4 1/2 to 5 cups of flour plus more for kneading

Egg Wash

1 egg
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Honey Butter

4 tablespoons of butter
1/8 cup of honey

Method:

In a large bowl combine yeast, warm water and milk until yeast is activated about 10-15 minutes. Add the melted butter, sugar and one cup of flour to the yeast mixture in the large bowl. Continue to add flour one cup at a time until you can put the dough up without it being sticky on your hands. Make sure you don’t add too much flour, you don’t want the dough to be dry and cracking. Once your have to the desired consistency, knead the dough on a floured surface. Then let raise in a large greased bowl for about an hour. Make sure you also grease the top of the dough too. Once the hour is up, punch the dough and start cutting it into pieces to roll out thin ropes. This is the most time consuming for me. It doesn’t need to be measured out prefect because you are going to pinch the ends of the braids together forming a large circular braid. Now that you have rolled out several ropes, it is time to braid them. Start out with the shortest two to braid, this will be the center. Start coiling them together on a large greased cookie sheet. Spiral all the braided pieces together until you have no more dough to work with. Make them stick together by pinching the ends.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit

In a small bowl, beat together the salt and egg to make the egg wash. Brush egg wash all over the dough or you can put the egg wash on every other braid leaving some of it without the egg wash. I personally love it all over.

Place in oven (it will be heavy), then turn the oven down to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Make honey butter, by mixing the two together. The bread needs to bake for 25-35 minutes or until egg washed area looks glossy and reflective like a pretzel. Once it is out of the oven brush the sweet honey butter all over… or on the parts you didn’t put egg wash on alternating from salty to sweet. Again, I like it all over.

Careful it is hot. Let it cool down a little before you take a bite. I know it can be hard to resist. We like it warm, but the next day it is as just as amazing.