High Altitude Orange Cardamom Easter Bread
This homemade Easter bread is soft, fluffy, buttery and sweet, flavored with cardamom, anise and fresh orange zest. Drizzled with orange icing and decorated with sprinkles, it makes a beautiful dessert bread to serve in the springtime.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Dough Hook (this dough can also be kneaded by hand)
Ingredients
Tangzhong
- 2 tbsp whole milk
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 ½ tbsp bread flour
Dough
- 1/3-1/2 cup whole milk, warmed to between 110-115F
- 1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) good quality instant or rapid rise yeast
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 3 cups (14 oz) bread flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- 5 tbsp unsalted butter, very soft
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- ¾ tsp anise extract (or vanilla extract)
- freshly grated zest of 1 navel orange
Icing
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp meringue powder
- 2 tbsp orange juice (use the juice from the orange you zested)
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- rainbow sprinkles
Instructions
Tangzhong
- In a small saucepan, whisk together the water, milk and flour. Cook over medium heat for several minutes, whisking constantly, until it thickens into a paste.
- Remove from the heat and set aside until needed.
Dough
- Warm the milk to between 110-115F. Stir in the yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar, then let it sit for about 5 minutes, until bubbly.
- In the bowl for your stand mixer, combine the flour with the rest of the sugar, salt, and cardamom. Add the tangzhong, the milk/yeast mixture, the soft butter, eggs, anise/vanilla extract, and orange zest, then stir into a rough, shaggy dough.
- With the dough hook, knead the dough for 10 minutes on medium low speed. The dough should be soft, smooth and stretchy, pulling away from the sides of the bowl but still sticking a little at the bottom. If kneading the dough by hand on your counter, knead the dough for 15 minutes. If the dough seems too loose, add more flour, a tablespoon at a time. If it seems too stiff, add some warm water, a teaspoon at a time. After kneading, you should be able to easily gather the dough into a ball with your hands.Note: This is a dough that you do not want to be too soft or loose, or it will be difficult to braid and shape. If you cannot gather it into a ball in your hands, knead in a little more flour.
- Gather the dough into a ball and place it into a greased bowl that's at least twice as big as the dough. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to rise until the dough is doubled in size. Depending on the freshness and quality of your yeast, as well as the warmth of the ingredients and environment, this may take 1-2 hours. For me, it took 1 hour with the bowl sitting inside my oven on the "bread proof" setting.
Shaping
- Note: I highly recommend watching the video in the recipe card for a tutorial on this step.
- Lightly flour a clean counter top, and turn the dough out onto the counter. Gently deflate the dough by pressing on it with your hands, and roll it out into a rectangle measuring approximately 15x7 inches.
- Use a rolling pastry wheel cutter or pizza wheel to cut the dough into 3 equal portions lengthwise. Gently stretch the strips of dough a little longer, then fold each of the strips in half, lengthwise, to form long ropes of dough.
- Lay the three strands side by side and braid them together from one end to the other, pressing the ends together at each end of the braid.
- For a wreath shape, bring the two ends of the braid together and pinch them together. For a round loaf, simply coil the braid up into a spiral, tucking the end underneath the outer edge of the loaf.For a long loaf, just pinch and tuck the ends of the braids under at each end. For this option, you could even tuck the braided loaf into a 13-inch pullman pan, and bake it in the loaf pan (without the lid).
- Stack two baking sheets together (which helps to insulate the bottom of the bread to keep it from browning too quickly), and line the top one with parchment paper. Gently transfer your shaped loaf to the baking sheet.
- Optional: Some people like to decorate Easter bread with whole, uncooked eggs in the shell (sometimes dyed different colors), which bake into the bread. If doing this, place the eggs onto the dough now.
- Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set in a warm place to proof for 1-2 hours, until puffy. Again, this will depend on the freshness and quality of your yeast, and the warmth of the environment. Mine only needed 1 hour to proof, but if your loaf isn't very puffy after an hour, continue to let it proof for another hour.
Bake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake the bread until a digital instant read thermometer inserted into the largest part of the bread reads 190F. For a wreath, this may only take 20-25 minutes, but for a round loaf that's more dense in the middle, this may take 30-40 minutes.
- Let the bread cool for 15 minutes, before adding the icing.
Icing
- In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and meringue powder (which will help the icing to set quickly, rather than remaining sticky). Stir in the vanilla and orange juice, until smooth and drizzly.
- Drizzle the icing over the warm bread, then immediately decorate with sprinkles before the icing sets.
- Enjoy the bread warm, or at room temperature.
- You can just tear off portions of the bread, or use a serrated knife, cutting in a back-and-forth sawing motion to cut slices.
Video
Notes
Store leftover Easter bread in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.
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