The Return of Sweet Bread

The following photos were taken Christmas Eve (day) when I tried out the sweet braided loaf recipe from the King Arthur Flour demo. Because of normal Christmas business followed by our fun bout with the flu, I never got around to posting them.

The recipe was given out at the demo, so here is a similar recipe from kingarthurflour.com : Braided Lemon Bread.




Gather Ingredients, oooo look! King Arthur Flour! I love this White Whole Wheat!


Here my sponge sits on the lower right, it almost grew out of the cup! And, ?, I don't remember why I had a knife in the sugar mixture.


The unkneaded dough after mixing everything together.


We learned at the demo that it is important to not use too much flour on your workspace - this is too much flour. Oops.


The dough after kneading.


Putting the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl to let rise.  I believe this is also too much oil. It has to sit about 1 1/2 hours.


The risen dough.  This is where a dough rising bucket would come in handy.


Mixing the cream cheese filling. This is where I realized my lemon was in a bad state and I juiced an orange in its place - turned out quite delicious.


Trying to roll the dough out into a rectangle is more difficult than I imagined.


Cutting the dough to make the "braid". This was my second attempt - the first was not worthy of a photo.  Filled the center with cream cheese filling and semi-sweet chocolate morsels.


The braided loaf. I forgot to photograph the process of cutting the strips, this is definitely a test of your ability to visualize the desired outcome.


The finished and baked loaves. These were enjoyed both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day by friends and family.  Overall it seemed more like an art project than like bread baking and was a lot of fun!