Braided Wreath Bread Recipes

BRAIDED BREAD WREATH

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with parchment and sprinkle with a thin layer of cornmeal.
• On a floured work surface, roll out the 3 dough portions into 3 long ropes. Line the 3 ropes up next to each other with the top ends overlapping and the bottom ends about 3 inches apart. Pinch the top ends. Braid the ropes together; pull the left section over to the center, then hold the old center section with your left hand and pull it to the side. Finally, bring the right section over the center. Repeat the process, alternating sides, until the entire length of bread is braided. Join both ends to form a round wreath.
• Transfer the dough wreath to the parchment lined sheet pan. Dust with flour, and cover with a kitchen towel. Let proof in a warm spot for 45 minutes.
• In a small bowl mix together the olive oil, garlic, paprika, Italian seasoning, and cheese. Set aside. Beat the egg with the water in a small bowl, and set aside
• Bake the bread wreath in the preheated oven for 40 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Remove the bread from the oven, and brush it with the olive oil mixture. Put it back in the oven, and bake it for an additional 20 minutes. In the last 10 minutes of baking, coat the entire wreath with the egg wash and sprinkle with coarse salt. Remove from the oven and serve hot.

THANKSGIVING BRAIDED BREAD WREATH RECIPE

Steps:

• In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, mix together the flour, water and sugar until it comes together into a soft dough. Cover and let sit for twenty minutes if you have time. If not, keep on going.
• Add the olive oil, salt, yeast, and poultry seasoning to your mixer bowl and continue to mix until all the ingredients are evenly distributed.
• Knead on medium-low speed for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. The dough should completely clear the sides and the bottom of your mixing bowl. If the dough sticks a bit in the bottom, add a small amount of flour (1 tablespoon or so) and continue kneading another couple of minutes.
• Once the dough is smooth and stretchy, oil your hands and gather the dough into a ball.
• Plop the ball back in the mixing bowl, spray lightly with pan spray or brush with some olive oil and allow to rise in a warm place until at least doubled, about 3 hours. Dough should be very light and airy.
• Evenly press all the gases out of the dough and place back in the mixer bowl. Oil or spray the top again, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.
• Remove the dough from the fridge and press out any gases that have built up in it.
• Portion out 5 4oz pieces of dough. Cut the remaining dough into 3 equal pieces. These pieces will be smaller and are for the leaves and pinecone.
• Shape the 5 pieces of dough into smooth balls. Take one of the dough balls and roll it out on the counter until you have a very short and fat snake.
• Set aside and do the same with each of the other four balls.
• Keep rolling them a bit longer, one at a time in succession, until all five balls have magically turned into ropes about 3 feet long.
• You can also make them shorter for a smaller wreath or even just braid them as a straight loaf. Totally your call. The reason why you're working with each piece in succession is that short rest while you're working with the other ones allows the gluten to relax enough to roll them out a bit longer with each turn. It took me a good five turns of rolling each one before I liked the length.
• Pinch the ends of the five ropes together at one end.
• Position the strands so you have two on one side of the work space and three on the other. (See Video, above and embedded in the recipe card).
• The two sets of strands should be at about a 45 degree angle from each other.
• Take the outside strand on the side with three and move it across his two friends to end up next to the two strands on the other side.
• Now that side has three strands and the other has two.
• Move the outside strand on that side across his two friends to end up next to the two strands on the original side.
• Keep braiding like that, keeping the angle between the two sets of strands as consistent as possible so the braid is uniform, until you get to the end. (Again, see video for a visual of this.)
• PInch the five ends together at the far end, and then form them into a ring.
• Pinch the ends together where they meet. That part won't be gorgeous, but that's okay because we're going to cover them with dough leaves.
• Place the wreath on a parchment-lined pan (I turned a half sheet pan upside down so my wreath wouldn't get messed up if it started pressing against the sides. If you have a flat cookie sheet, that will work as well.
• Knead the turmeric into one of the remaining balls of dough as well as you can.
• Do the same with the paprika to another of them.
• Knead a bit of cocoa powder into the third ball if you want your pinecone to be brown. I left mine natural, so it's your call.
• Roll the yellow and orange dough out very thin. You should not need to flour or oil your work surface. This dough is very easy to work with.
• Use cookie cutters to cut out leaf shapes. If you don't have leaf cutters, heart and star cutters will work because once you cut them out, you can pull on the shapes to make them more leaf-like. A third option is to just free-hand it all. That's what I did, and it worked out just fine. I cut out leaf shapes with a sharp paring knife.
• Use a bit of water to "glue" the leaves Artfully onto your wreath. You can go all the way around or stay in one place like I did. You can make your leaves bigger or smaller. Go crazy!
• For the pine
• cone/s, form small egg shapes and stick them where you want them.
• My guys slumped a bit, so I would probably add more flour to the third ball of dough the next time.
• Take scissors and snip into the dough at regular intervals to simulate the...petals? What are those called? If nobody has any issues with nuts, you can also use sliced almonds to simulate the petal things. Just shove them into the dough eggs so they look like pinecones.
• Spray the finished bread lightly with pan spray, cover and refrigerate for 6 hours.
• Remove the dough from the fridge. It won't look too much different than it did when you put it in there in the first place, but it has been sneakily developing flavor.
• Let rise in a warm place in your kitchen while you preheat the oven for an hour.
• Place a baking stone on the center rack and preheat to 350F.
• At the end of the hour, brush the whole loaf with the egg wash and transfer the bread--still on the parchment--to the baking stone.
• Bake for 15 minutes. Rotate the pan and bake another 10-15 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread is 200F-205F.
• If your bread isn't as brown as you'd like (mine wasn't), put it under the broiler--watching carefully--for a couple of minutes.
• Remove to a rack to cool.
• Wash and some small rosemary sprigs and poke them into the bread (artfully, of course) around the pinecones.
• Use as part of your Thanksgiving table centerpiece and then pass to share.