I always enjoy researching and baking traditional Easter breads. Maybe its because I have such fond memories of my mother’s Easter bread which wasn’t fancy but just ‘to die for’. This year I decided to try my hand at making some Polish Easter bread called ‘placek’.
Just for the sake of interest I wanted to post some of the various countries and their traditional Easter breads.
- Babka (Poland, Ukraine, Belarus): a tall, cylindrical bread often baked in a Bundt-type pan and containing raisins and/or candied citron or orange peel, optionally with icing on the top, thus making it much sweeter than Paska, a broad, round, rich, white bread decorated on the top with symbols, including crosses, flowers, braids, wheat, or other designs representing aspects of Orthodox (Eastern) Christianity—made only for Easter to celebrate the rising of Christ from the dead.
- Placek (Poland): refers to a sweet yeast bread topped with sugary crumble, with or without golden raisins served on Easter. (Pronounced plah-sek)
- Cozonac (Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia): a slightly sweet yeast bread containing raisins and walnuts or pecans—a type of Stollen.
- Folar (Portugal): a bread that may be either sweet or salty and is traditionally offered to godfathers, and priests at Easter in imitation of Jesus’ distribution of bread to his disciples at the Last Supper.
- Hornazo (Spain): a yeast bread meat pie stuffed with pork loin, spicy chorizo, and hard-boiled eggs
- Hot Cross Buns (Great Britain): a spiced sweet bun containing currants or raisins (and sometimes other dried fruits), marked on top with icing in the shape of a cross, and traditionally eaten on Good Friday.
- Kalach (Serbia, Hungary): similar to brioche and usually baked in a braid arranged to form a circle.
- Mazanec (Czech Republic): a sweet bread eaten throughout Holy Week made of dough containing rum soaked raisins and dried fruit, baked as a round loaf, with slivered almonds on top and a decoration made of icing or powdered sugar in the shape of a cross.
- Osterbrot (Germany): a yeast bread containing raisins and slivered almonds and usually cut into thin slices, spread with butter, and enjoyed at breakfast or at teatime.
- Paasstol (Netherlands): a fruit-bread containing raisins and usually filled with almond paste (also made at Christmas).
- Pasca (Romania, Moldova): a sweet bread served with sweet soft cheese that may also be decorated with fruits, nuts, or chocolate.
- Pasqua (Italy): a cake containing candied peel but no raisins and topped with pearl sugar and almonds before being baked in the shape of a ‘dove’.
- Pinca (Croatia, Montenegro): a sweet bread loaf with the sign of a cross carved on top before being baked and eaten at the end of Lent.
- Tsoureki (Greece, Armenia): a sweet holiday bread commonly seasoned with orange zest, mastic resin (from the mastic tree), or mahlab (an aromatic spice made from the pits of the Mediterranean “St. Lucy’s” cherry tree).
Hope you enjoyed reading this info as much as I did.
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Ingredients
Sponge
- 1 cup lukewarm milk
- 1 Tbsp active dry yeast
- 3/4 Tbsp sugar
- 1 cup flour
Dough
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cardamom
- zest of one orange or lemon
- 2 cups flour
- 320 gm (2 cups) golden raisins
Crumble Topping
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/4 - 1/2 cup almonds, sliced
Ingredients
Sponge
Dough
Crumble Topping
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Instructions
Sponge
- In a bowl, dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk with sugar & allow to stand until foamy, about 15 minutes. Stir in the flour, then cover the bowl & let the sponge rise until doubled in size, 30 minutes to an hour.
Dough
- In a mixing bowl, cream together butter & sugar, then add the eggs in one at a time; beat until fluffy. Add in the salt, nutmeg zest & 1 cup of flour; beat well. When the sponge is risen, add that to the creamed mixture along with the last cup of flour & the raisins. Knead dough until a very smooth, elastic, sticky dough forms.
- Using greased hands, place dough into a greased or buttered bowl. Cover the bowl & allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1-2 hours.
Crumble Topping
- Cut butter into sugar & flour until it is fully mixed in & crumbly, then stir in the almonds.
Assembly
- When the dough has risen, use greased or wet hands to place in greased baking pans. Sprinkle the crumble over the dough, pressing in lightly. Cover the pans, then let the dough rise until doubled or until almost risen to the top.
- Preheat oven to 325 F.
- Bake for 30-45 minutes until golden brown on top. Let the bread cool on a wire rack,
Recipe Notes
- I used one 12" x 5 " loaf pan & one 5" x 2" round spring form pan for this amount of dough.