Cornish Saffron Easter Bread Recipes

CORNISH SAFFRON EASTER BREAD

Steps:

• Cook the flour, milk and water together until thickened, whisking constantly over medium heat.
• Let cool.
• Put all the rest of the dough ingredients in the bowl of your heavy duty stand mixer fitted with the dough hook.
• Mix on low speed until all the ingredients are combined.
• Cover the bowl (still on the mixer) and let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.
• Knead on medium low speed for ten minutes. Cover the mixer and let the dough rest again for another 20-30 minutes.
• Knead another 10 minutes on medium-low speed. Check the dough to see if it will pass the windowpane test. If not, let it rest for another 20 minutes or so and knead again for 5 minutes. You can also finish by vigorously kneading by hand if you want.
• Once the dough is smooth and supple and passes the windowpane test, shape it into a smooth ball and place it back in the mixing bowl. smooth side up. Spray the dough with a bit of oil or pan spray and then cover with plastic wrap or a lint-free towel.
• Let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 4-5 hours, depending on the temperature of the dough and the temperature of the warm place you let it rise.
• When the dough has doubled, gently press out the gases.
• Put the dough in a gallon-sized zip top bag and let rest in the fridge overnight (at least 8 hours).
• When ready to shape your dough, remove the dough from the fridge and weigh it. You should have right around 60 oz of dough. I scaled my dough into 5 12 oz pieces and shaped each one a bit differently. You can also make larger loaves by scaling into 3 20 oz pieces or 4 15 oz pieces. This part is completely up to you.
• Shape each piece however you would like, including baking as loaves if you'd like. Place each finished dough on parchment-lined sheet trays, spray with pan spray, cover and let rise in a warm place until puffy and not quite doubled in size, about 2 hours.
• Bake at 425F for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350F and bake until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 195-200F, about 25 minutes total. If baking on two racks (I had to), swap trays top to bottom and rotate each tray 180F to ensure even baking. If any of the loaves start to get overly browned before they are done, cover them loosely with foil.
• When done, remove the loaves to racks to cool. Brush a thin layer of the glaze evenly on each loaf. It should be almost transparent. Of course, if you like a lot of glaze, add more after the first layer sets up.
• Serve at room temperature. This bread is also delicious toasted. You don't need to slather any butter on it since it is already so rich, but jam wouldn't hurt.
• Enjoy!

CORNISH SAFFRON BREAD: TANGZHONG METHOD

Steps:

• Combine the flour, milk and water in a small saucepan.
• Heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens up. It should be about the consistency of pancake batter.
• Cover and set aside to cool for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Combine all the ingredients except for the butter in the bowl of your stand mixer.
• Mix with the dough hook on low speed until you have a very shaggy dough.
• Knead on medium low speed for about 5 minutes. The dough will still be a mess--all sticking in the bottom and on the sides of the bowl--and you will feel sad. Worry not. All will be okay.
• Turn off the mixer and cover the bowl with a towel. Go do something for 20 minutes or so.
• Knead again on medium-low speed for another 5 minutes. As the dough is kneading, add the butter about a tablespoon at a time, making sure each addition is at least mostly incorporated before adding the next addition. This whole process should take about 5 minutes. You will notice that, rather counter-intuitively, the dough starts to behave itself a bit better with much less sticking on the sides of the bowl but still rather a lot in the bottom. Carry on.
• Once the butter is completely incorporated, turn off the mixer, cover the bowl with a towel, and walk away for another 20 minutes or so.
• Come back and knead for another 5-10 minutes. The dough is done when it is very extensible (you can pull on it and it stretches way more than you think it will) and passes the windowpane test. You'll know it's time to test it when the dough completely stops sticking in the bottom of the bowl. It will be soft but only minimally sticky, and you will breathe a sigh of relief and mutter "finally" under your breath.
• Form the dough into a ball and drop it back in your mixer bowl. Spray the top with some pan spray or with a neutral oil, and cover it up.
• Let it rise in a warm place until doubled. This could take 4-5 hours if you used the smaller quantity of yeast. At this point, if it's bedtime or you have other things to do, press the gases out of the dough, cover it again and shove it in the fridge until you can deal with it. I left mine overnight--about 10 hours.
• When the dough has doubled in size (or when you pull it out of the fridge), press out the gases and decide what you're going to do with it.
• You will have about 60 oz of dough. I scaled mine into 3 20oz portions. You can choose to make yours into buns (scale at 4 oz or so per bun) or one enormous braided wreath, or you could scale them to bake in loaf pans.
• If you braid the loaves, tuck the eggs in wherever you want. I just Googled pictures of "Easter Breads" on the Internet to get some ideas.
• Whatever you decide to do with it, shape each piece and place them on parchment-lined sheet pans or in loaf pans or even in cake pans or Pyrex, spray the tops, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. This will take a long time, especially if you used the smaller quantity of yeast. The dough is pretty rich, so just give it time.
• I brushed the tops of mine with milk and sprinkled them with turbinado sugar. You can do that if you want, or not.
• Bake at 450F for 5 minutes before reducing the heat to 350F until done. The internal temperature should be 200F (a couple of degrees either side is fine), and the bread will be deep golden brown to a medium toasty brown. If you find that your bread is browning too quickly, just cover it with a piece of foil.
• Total baking time for my 20 oz loaves was 25 minutes.
• I don't know what to call the one with the egg in the center, so sunburst will do. It turned out so pretty that I thought I'd tell you how I made it--it was really, really easy!
• First shape the dough into a smooth round. Press it flat on the counter and roll it out into about a 10-11" circle. It should be about 1/2 inch thick.
• Using a bench knife (that's what I used) or a pizza cutter, cut into the disc from the outsides in toward the center, leaving about a 2 1/2" space in the center uncut.
• To keep the spacing even, I made cuts at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 and then went back and divided those into thirds for a total of 12 cuts.
• Take each of the "branches" that you have cut and turn them over. Of course, they're attached and so you'll end up with a twist in the center.
• Then, take a sharp knife and slice into the center of each branch. Only slice down about 1/8-1/4".
• Cut a shallow "x" in the center of the dough and carefully open it up, making sure not to bust through the bottom.
• Tuck an egg in there. It will look like it's pretty much sitting on top of the dough, and I was afraid it wouldn't bake up nicely. But it did. Yay!
• And that's all there is to that one.

B. VOYCHESHIN'S EASTER BREAD WITH SAFFRON AND RAISINS

Steps:

• Scald the milk and leave to cool.
• Set raisins in water to reconstitute.
• Combine warm water, sugar and yeast. Let stand until frothy, approximately 10 minutes.
• Beat the cooled milk and first amount of flour well with beaters in a very large bowl with a tight fitting cover.
• Add the yeast mixture to the milk and flour, beat well then cover and let stand for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 hours.
• In a small bowl mix together the warm melted butter, oil, vanilla, lemon zest, lemon juice and saffron. Allow this mixture to steep and strengthen its flavor.
• Meanwhile, separate the eggs and put the yolks in a medium bowl with the two whole eggs (reserve the whites for another use, but you do need one later). I TRY TO BUY FREE RANGE EGGS FOR THIS USE SO THAT I AM SURE TO HAVE THE YELLOWEST YOLKS. Beat the eggs and yolks until they are frothy but not stiff. Add the sugar and salt and continue beating until both are dissolved.
• Add the butter/oil/saffron mix to the eggs and beat well.
• Now, combine the egg/butter mixture into the yeast and flour that was set aside earlier and beat this well.
• Take this moment to drain and pat dry the raisins that have been soaking, and toss them in the second amount of flour so that they do not sink (THIS MAY BE AN OLD WIVES TALE, BUT I DO IT ANYWAYS BECAUSE MY MOM TOLD ME TO, AND AT THIS POINT I THINK YOU SHOULD TOO).
• Begin adding the flour to the egg/butter/yeast mixture one cup at a time and beat well between each cup. Beat until you can beat no more.
• I don't have a Kitchen Aid so at about 3 cups I have to stop beating with beaters and resort to stirring by hand. I find that a flat hand held spatula helps, but you've got to do it to get all the flour in and distributed evenly.
• When all the flour is blended evenly you add the raisins to the batter, you want to distribute them throughout, but don't want to break them either, so be gentle.
• This will be less like a dough and more like a very thick batter, but with oiled hands and a floured board you should be able to knead it.
• Turn this batter out onto a WELL FLOURED BOARD, and with oiled hands knead it LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS.
• Oil the dough and place it back into the bowl, cover it tightly and let it stand until it has doubled (60 min).
• Punch the dough down and form it into loaves.
• Let the loaves double in size (50 min).
• Bake the loaves in a preheated 400F oven for 15 minutes, brush with some of the egg whites (beaten) then turn down the oven to 350°F Continue baking for 30-40 minutes until the loaves are hollow sounding.
• Personal notes:.
• Grease loaf pans well.
• Remove the rim from a coffee can and bake these loaves in them for an authentic round loaf, be sure to keep the loaves below 1/2 full in the can or you will have a mushroom top.
• This bread makes extra-ordinarily good cinnamon buns.
• This bread also makes the most supreme French Toast.