Easter Basket Bread - BBD#19

Update! Putting this on Sweet As Sugar Cookies for April 2011.

For our bread baking day this month the theme is ‘Spring Country Breads’, hosted by Cindystar, at http://cindystarblog.blogspot.com. I didn't get a chance to do this bread for Easter as I had wanted, but did get it made and my family loved it. I couldn’t think of a country bread my family has ever made. My mom, sister and I have carried on a tradition of baking rolls at Christmas time and making the same for Easter, also the coconut bread I made last month. So I thought this was a good theme and have decided to make my own family tradition of an ‘Easter Basket Egg Bread’.
I knew I saw somewhere a picture of what I wanted the bread to look like, but do you think I could find the cookbook it is in? Nope! I knew I had a good egg bread recipe from high school days, so I turned it into the basket shape.
This is the original recipe from either my high school days or my first job. That was 40 years ago, boy am I getting old and yep, I graduated in 1969! Go Azusa!
I loved my homemaking classes. I wasn’t allowed to cook or bake at home, so loved it when my teacher in my senior year let me bake all kinds of things and all by myself. During one class period I had all 7 little kitchens at my disposal, what memories that brings back. Wow! That’s another blog I should write about someday. Back to BBD……


RICH EGG BREAD

2 packages dry yeast
½ cup warm water (105˚F to 115˚F)
1 ½ cup lukewarm milk (scalded then cooled)
¼ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs
¼ cup butter or shortening
7 to 7 ½ cups flour
Dissolve yeast in warm water in large bowl and let proof 5 minutes. Stir in milk, sugar, salt, eggs, butter and 3 ½ cups of the flour. Beat until smooth. Mix in enough of the remaining flour to make dough easy to handle. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl and cover with a clean dish towel, greased side up. Let rise until doubled, about 1-1 ½ hours.


Grease 2 loaf pans. Punch down dough, divide into 2 loaves. Roll out dough into a rectangle, then roll up jelly-roll style, tuck ends under and put in greased pans. Bake at 425˚F for about 30 minutes. Tap bread for the hollow sound and then it should be done.

Notes or what I did different:
I used powered milk and did not scald it, as the process for powered already is scalded. The water used to reconstitute the milk is warm.
I used ½ all-purpose flour and ½ spelt flour.
I would suggest using butter instead of shortening; it has a much better flavor.
The temperature for the oven was at 425˚F, but within 10 minutes the bread smelled like it was burning so I turned it down to 350˚F and it baked more evenly and a pretty brown.
This is a nice soft bread and all the kiddies enjoyed it!!!!

Thank you Cindistar for doing this months BBD and Zorra, for starting it!