Russian Easter Vanilla Bread | Kulich Recipe | Episode 10

Hello everyone! And it's very, very fluffy, very brioche type of bread, very soft in the middle. Because we're making it fresh, it's always best to make it the day, you know, on Easter day. So technically you bake it on the same day. You can do all the dough before and then bake it on the day because it's fresh. It smells good, but it will also taste really good the next day if you just warm it up with a bit of butter and jam. I really hope you enjoyed this recipe, guys. and you know I hope you enjoy these Easter series so do give me a big thumbs up subscribe to my channel to say thank you and I'll be coming up with loads of delicious recipes for you every single week so yeah let's get started first thing we're gonna do is soak our raisins and cranberries in some rum or brandy feel free to use also orange juice or lemon juice if you don't like the alcohol but you won't taste it trust me so you want to just mix them through and we want to soak them for about one to two hours. You can do this the night before or a few hours before, it's completely up to you. Then you're going to add small amounts of flour together with sugar and yeast. I'm using quick instant yeast. Mix everything together until it's fully combined and then I'm adding warm milk. Make sure that your milk is warm otherwise your yeast will not activate and make sure that it's not hot either as your yeast can die. So I needs to be just lukewarm around 35 to 40 degrees Celsius. So just keep adding your milk a little bit at a time and mixing it together with a spoon. You can also change to a whisk later on if you find it easier but at the very beginning I find it's quite a big chunk of dough. So just keep adding your flour a little bit at a time so there are no lumps and mixing until your mixture is nice and smooth once you get a nice smooth mixture or close to it you just want to wrap this in cling film and leave it for about 45 minutes to one hour to double in size and activate so place it into a warm cabinet somewhere in your kitchen as some of you know i have launched my online cooking school where you can learn how to make the most amazing cakes ever i've got level one two and three for beginners to advanced and you'll be able to learn the beautiful mousse cakes. You can also do this as a gift for somebody who loves cooking and baking. I think it's an awesome present and of course if you wanted to learn yourself. Each course has over 20 to 40 video lessons in there where I teach you all the skills, different cakes and unique designs. We also have a Facebook community group for all the bakers that join my course and you will have my unlimited support throughout teaching and learning I really hope to see you in my online cooking school and if you have any more questions then leave the comments down below Now you can see the dough has risen and it's doubled in size and you can see these little bubbles on top so it's good to go so we're just going to take off the cling film and we're going to start making our dough so add your eggs into a stand mixer you can also use a normal hand whisk or electric whisk I just find that the stand is a bit easier then add your sugar and vanilla extract and whisk everything for good five to seven minutes until your mixture starts to double up in size and become nice and fluffy you might want to mix this on a medium to high speed to get the fluffiness and when you take off the whisk it should be nice and soft just like that then you want to add your yeast mixture that has activated right inside all of it and then add the rest of the flour and your butter make sure that your butter is melted and has cooled down don't worry if you have a few chunks in there that's fine it's all going to get mixed in together and you want to to mix the dough for good 10 to 15 minutes. If you're doing this by hand, make sure you're ready to do some work as it will take some time. Once you're finished with your dough, you're going to take your spatula and just kind of mix it all together. Make sure it's nice and mixed from the end and you don't have anything stuck on the sides and the dough is nice and mixed through. And now I'm going to wrap this in cling film and leave it to proof for about one to two hours until it doubles in size in the meantime take your dried fruit raisins and cranberries you can also use any other fruit and just tap it with a paper towel to get rid of any excess water obviously the rum that we used and you just want to spread them out and then add some flour on top the reason we add flour is that so our dried fruit doesn't sink to the bottom of our pastry as that's what usually happens if you don't flour your dried fruit so once it's all dry you can just set this aside now my dough has been proving it's doubled in size you can see how beautiful it is it's time to add my dried fruit in there together with lemon zest I'm adding about one tablespoon and just mix everything together you can also add orange zest if you like so just to give it that nice fresh flavor so mix everything together until it's completely incorporated and you get different bits of fruits spread out around your pastry mixture that way it's gonna be nice and even I'm using these paper molds that were sent to me from Italy by this amazing guy Francesco you can check him out I'll leave his links and just spray the bottom with some nonstick spray and add your mixture I actually should have used three paper molds instead of two because I had a lot of dough but it depends on the size of your molds. You can either have four or three or two so I'll leave the measurements down below so you can measure how big your paper molds are. So once you've added your dough just spread it around with a fork and just kind of press down on it to make sure it's nice and even. And we're going to put these to prove in the oven at the lowest setting for about 45 minutes. Once they've been proven you can see they've pretty much doubled in size again and risen all the way to the top and on my left it's risen way too much so don't want it to rise this much as it will kind of just blow up in your oven but it's fine guys it's going to be delicious then you want to spread your egg yolk on top of each kulich and just kind of make sure it's nice and even then you're going to bake these for about 20 to 25 minutes until they're nice and golden so once they baked you want to take them out and cool down them completely you can check with a toothpick if they cooked inside and if it's clean that they done leave them to cool down and I'm just gonna now make the icing so add icing sugar together with egg whites and you just want to whisk this on a high speed first I just like to mix it all together because as you know flour will go everywhere and then you just want to whisk this on high speed until all the mixture becomes together and it's nice and fluffy so this process will probably take around five minutes I've decided to add a bit of pink food coloring to give it a nice color very very light pink coloring just a little bit and just to make it more like a holiday sort of season and it's pretty as I'm also going to be adding some sprinkles on top the consistency should be quite thick if you want it thicker or thinner you can add more icing sugar and or more water it's completely up to you so now I'm just gonna show you how it looks inside it cuts through really well and the dough is super soft very airy if you press on it you almost leave a fingertip and you can see all the raisins and cranberries have spread out through the bread and it smells absolutely amazing so once you cut it you should probably eat it straight away as it's super fresh and dries out if you're not covering it so enjoy this on your Easter straight away just look how airy that is super super delicious very very moist and fresh and guys i absolutely love this bread with my second one i'm gonna decorate it with my icing feel free to use any other icing that you have or if you want to you don't have to use anything at all but i just think it gives it a much festive look. And then I'm going to add some sprinkles, colorful sprinkles, just to finish it off and serve it at the table. I hope you enjoyed this video guys. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you soon.