Easter bread.........a bit late........

Today I made my Nani's Easter bread recipe.  Yes, I'm late but at least I made it this year, there's many a year I have plans for it but never do.  This is an anise bread that starts with 5 pounds of flour - yep, 5 pounds!  And is it ever tough to mix and knead that much bread dough.  But I've got 10 loaves of bread to put in the freezer.   Well, 9 loaves since I've already sampled and since this picture was taken, just minutes ago, Sam attacked the loaf I started.  It's great toasted for breakfast.

I used to help my grandmother make this bread each year.  For all us kids we would make smaller braids, form them in a circle, put a dyed hard boiled egg in the center and 2 thin strips of dough to hold the egg in place. They were so pretty and we each got our own little loaf.  I can't remember what that hard boiled egg was like but it was already cooked and then cooked again in the oven - must have been like a golf ball.

So, we're set for Easter bread for a while...….minus a couple that will be saved for family.

Nani's Easter Bread Recipe

Nani’s Easter Bread 

5 lbs flour

1 cup sugar

¼ cup salt

¾ lb shortening (if in sticks – two sticks less 3 tb)

¼ lb cake yeast (or 6 each 1/4oz packets of instant dry yeast or 15 tsp of jarred instant dry yeast)

¾ cup warm water

1 qt whole milk

9 eggs (plus 3 for brushing top of loaves)

½-1 tbs lemon extract

½-1 tbs vanilla extract

½ oz anise seed (we use 1 oz) 

Mix all dry ingredients. Cut in shortening as for pie dough.

Dissolve yeast in the warm water with 2 tbs sugar until it foams. No more than 10 minutes.

Add all wet ingredients plus anise seed to dry ingredients and mix into dough. Let sit 20-30 minutes.

Knead on floured surface until dough is not sticky and is elastic, around 20 minutes (or until your arms fall off)

Cut into pieces big enough to roll into 30 same size balls about the size of a racquet ball. Let sit for 1 hour or more to rise.

Roll balls into long strips. Braid. Let sit for 1 hour or more to rise. Brush top with beaten egg yolks.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes (25 minutes in convection oven)

Makes 10 loaves – freezes well.

Tastes best if made in Nani’s official dough making wash tub

It's that time of year again.......

It's that time of year again - time to make Nani's Easter Bread which is just what my cousin Jim and I did today. The recipe makes 10 nice big braided loaves using 5 pounds of flour, many eggs, anise seeds plus the usual other bread making ingredients.

Here's Jim starting the kneading process - it helps big time to have help baking this much bread

Here I am kneading when Jim needed a break

Here are 3 of my loaves ready to start raising. We made 10 loaves total.

Here are the first two of my loaves out of the oven.

Here are more - aren't they beautiful?

What could be better than Nani's Easter Bread warm out of the oven with butter? Not much. Nani, my Italian grandmother, passed away over 13 years ago but her memory will live forever.

 

Not sure what is up but I'm still having problems uploading pictures to my blog. I need to start the post, publish it and then go back in an edit to get the pictures to upload and sometimes it takes many tries, not sure what happened a couple weeks ago but it's been a challenge.

Easter Bread Recipe

Ok, yes I was a bad person posting pictures of the Easter Bread and no recipe - bad, bad me. I will type it up now.....and I will type it up combining my notes in with it because the original recipe itself in the family cookbook had very little to it, no one else could make it unless they had made it with Nani over the years.

Nani's Easter Bread

5 pounds of all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 lb yeast (this is where I had to research several years back to find out that six 1/4oz packets of yeast or 15 tsp are equal to 1/4 lb of cake yeast)
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 lb shortening (2 sticks of Crisco less 3 Tbs)
1 quart whole milk
1 Tbs lemon extract
1 Tbs vanilla
1 oz anise seed (over $8!!!)
9 eggs
1/4 cup salt

In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, salt and shortening, cut in as in pie dough, let sit 20-30 minutes.

Dissolve yeast in warm water with 2 Tbs sugar until it proofs

Add water/yeast mixture, milk, lemon extract, vanilla, anise seeds and eggs to flour mixture. Knead until smooth and elastic. Let rise for at least 1 hour or until doubled in size

Cut into pieces big enough to roll into balls about the size of baseballs (we did smaller for these loaves) Roll balls into long strips, braid. Let rise for around an hour.

Brush tops of loaves with beaten egg yolks

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes. Time may vary on size of loaves, we baked ours anywhere from 22-26 minutes since they were smaller and we were using a convection oven.

The original recipe makes around 10 loaves.

Easter Bread - Oh Yum

I grew up helping my Italian grandmother make Easter Bread every year. It's a anise seed egg based bread that is to die for, tastes great right out of the oven with butter on it and even better toasted the next day or so for breakfast. I asked my cousin Jim if he'd like to come over and learn how to make it, he grew up in Ohio so wasn't there for the actual baking - Nani (our grandmother) lived next door to me so I helped with all baking that went on. So, today was bread baking day. I forgot to take a picture of the fixings starting with 5 pounds of flour in Nani's official metal bread making bowl but I've got a picture of it later down the line. She used to make Italian bread in it on an almost weekly basis while I was growing up. Jim started the mixing in the metal bowl, or let's just call it a wash tub because that's basically what it was, so he used a wooden spoon to get it mixed together, then I took over kneading in the tub. Then we dumped it out onto the counter and Jim started the real kneading process.

Next we put it back in the wash tub to raise for over an hour. Sorry I didn't get many pictures along the way but my hands were dough covered much of the time.

After the dough doubled in size we started cutting off chunks to roll out and braid into loaves. We made our loaves a bit smaller and ended up with 17 in total. The braided dough sat and rose for another hour, then we brushed it with an egg yolk and baked it- the smell was incredible.

Here are some of the loaves. My friend Yvonne could smell the bread baking all the way from her house so she came over with fresh farm eggs for Jim and left with 2 loaves........after sampling some warm bread with butter here at the house.

And here are more sitting in the wash tub we mixed the dough in - it's a huge wash tub, I think there 10 of the loaves in it right here. Nani always made us kids our own special easter bread - she braided the dough, wound it in a circle and put a hard boiled egg in the center and put two small strips across the eggs securing ti to the loaf. I can't remember much about that egg, it must have been as hard as a rubber ball after being hardboiled and baked! Someday I'll have to decide who to pass the wash tub on to - it's a pretty important bit of family history - I'd have to be assured that whoever gets it after I'm gone learns how to bake Easter Bread and carries on the tradition.