OCTAEVO x Funky Bakers

Bread, design and Barcelona. An unlikely pairing that made complete sense.

We teamed up with our favourite Barcelona bakery Funky Bakers and made a Greek Easter bread- the hero piece of your festive table. Lets get started!

Ingredients:

500 gm (2⅔ cups) plain flour
21 gm (3 packets) dried yeast
125 ml (½ cup) milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten, plus extra for brushing
50 gm caster sugar
Finely grated rind of 2 oranges
2 tsp mahlepi (aromatic spice made from the seeds of a species of cherry, Prunus mahaleb)
75 gm softened butter, coarsely chopped, plus extra to serve
3 eggs for decoration

1. Combine flour, yeast and a pinch of salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, form a well in the centre, set aside. Add milk, eggs, sugar, orange rind, mahlepi and 100ml lukewarm water and mix until a soft dough forms (5-7 minutes). Gradually add butter, a little at a time, mixing until a smooth soft dough forms (3-5 minutes), place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set aside until doubled in size (40 minutes-1 hour).

Step 1: the Greek Easter bread dough left to prove

2. Meanwhile, for the red Easter eggs, peel the skin off of an onion and put it in a cooking pot with boiling water. Add the eggs and let them rest.

Step 2: eggs dyed red with onion skin for the Easter bread

3. Knock back dough and divide into 3 pieces. Roll each piece into a 45cm-long cylinder, plait pieces together, then bring ends together to form a wreath and squeeze to join. Place on an oven tray lined with baking paper and set aside to prove slightly (20 minutes).

Step 3: the dough plaited and joined into a wreath

4. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Brush wreath with eggwash, gently push red Easter eggs (unpeeled) into wreath and bake until wreath is golden and cooked through (25-30 minutes).

Step 4: the wreath brushed with eggwash and studded with red eggs