Italian Easter Bread
A sweet braided bread scented with lemon and anise, baked around whole dyed eggs and iced with coloured sprinkles.
Photograph credit: Italian Easter bread by BryanAlexander · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
Before You Start
Dye the eggs raw so they cook in the oven.
Tuck the eggs in firmly.
The eggs are safe to eat for a day or two if kept refrigerated.
Cooking Italian Easter Bread
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Mix the flour, yeast, caster sugar, salt and lemon zest. Add the anise extract, warm milk, 2 eggs and butter and knead for 10 minutes. Cover and leave to rise for 90 minutes until doubled.
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Divide into 3 ropes, 50 cm long, and braid. Shape into a ring on a lined tray and tuck the dyed eggs into the braid, securing each with a thin strip of dough.
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Cover and leave to rise for 30 minutes.
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Heat the oven to 180°C / 355°F (160°C / 320°F fan). Brush with the beaten egg and bake for 30 minutes until deep golden.
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Cool. Mix the icing sugar with the milk, drizzle over the bread and scatter with the sprinkles.
What's Going On Here
In Italian-American homes, the Easter bread arrives on the table with its eggs baked into it, still in their shells and coloured pink, blue and yellow. They are not for decoration only. They are the Easter lunch's first mouthful: bread, an egg, a bite of something sweet.
The dough is a sweet, soft one: flour, sugar, yeast, milk, eggs, butter, lemon zest and a little anise extract or ground anise seed. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and silky, then leave it to rise for 1 hour 30 minutes. Do not rush the rise. A well-risen dough makes a light, feathery bread that pulls apart in strips.
Dye the eggs raw: simmer them in water coloured with food colouring and a splash of vinegar for 5 minutes, then dry them. They finish cooking in the oven.
Divide the dough into 3 ropes, braid, and shape into a ring. Tuck the dyed eggs into the braid and secure with thin strips of dough. Rise again for 30 minutes. Brush with egg and bake at 180°C / 355°F for 30 minutes, until golden. Cool, then ice and scatter with sprinkles.
After You've Cooked It
Keeps in the fridge for 3 days. The bread freezes without the eggs.
Serving Italian Easter Bread
- Coffee
- Sliced cured meats
- Easter lunch
- Butter
Common Questions About Italian Easter Bread
How long does Italian Easter Bread take to make?
40 minutes of preparation and 30 minutes of cooking, plus 2 hours of Proving, so allow 3 hours 10 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
Italian Easter Bread Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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