Easter brioche with rosehip marmalade
Ingredients:
400 g of white flour and more for kneading
3 eggs
180 g sugar
200 ml of milk
½ teaspoon of natural vanilla extract
½ teaspoon mahleb
½ grated tonka bean
160 g melted butter
Sunflower oil
25 g of fresh baker’s yeast
Rosehip marmalade (or other)
1 egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of milk
Sugar
Preparation:
Dissolve the yeast with the sugar, flour and milk (warm). Cover and let rise in a warm place.
In a deep bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar. Then stir in the vanilla, yeast, 80 g of the melted butter and the milk (200 ml, warm). Finally, gradually add the flour. Work the mixture with your hands making a soft dough. Keep kneading while adding 1 tablespoon of the remaining melted butter until the dough absorbs it completely. Do this until all the remaing butter is incorporated in the dough.
Cover the dough and let rest in a warm place for 1-2 hours. It is ready, when it doubles in volume.
When the dough is already puffed, knead it again by adding a sip of oil from time to time. From this dose of ingredients, you can make one big brioche or 2 medium-sized. I chose to bake them in rectangular cake tins and the pastry was enough to fill 2 tins of that kind. One was braided, the other with dough balls tucked one next to each other.
For the braided bun, divide the dough into three equal parts . Shape each into a long sausage. The slightly roll it out with a rolling pin and spread over each a good layer of marmalade. Then seal the pastry by pinching it lengthwise to reconstruct the “sausages “. Finally, braid them and transfer into a buttered pan.
For the other version, divide the dough into 8 or 10 balls. Flatten each a bit in your hand, make a hollow in the middle, top it with marmalade and shape back into a ball again. Put the stuffed pastry balls in the second rectangular mold.
Brush the buns with egg yolk (diluted with milk) and sprinkle with sugar. Let rest at least 30 minutes in a warm corner.
Bake the Easter brioches at 180°C until golden. Check with a wooden stick whether they are cooked through. If needed, cover with a sheet of aluminum foil. Cool on a wire rack.