Italian Easter Bread #GardenCuizine #HappyEaster

Italian Easter Bread

Our family tradition is to bake 2 large rings of Sicilian Easter Bread on Easter Sunday. Fruit is added to the dough. This year I added chopped dates, anise seeds and candied orange. Uncooked eggs are added to the dough braid and bake in the oven. Eggs baked in the oven usually come out perfectly hard cooked. This year was the first time I ever had an egg explode during baking! Luckily, it was only one egg and it exploded near the end of baking with only a part of the shell coming off.

In trying to figure out why the egg exploded, I've concluded that in past years I have often peeked into the oven (heat escapes) to look at the bread. This year I never opened the oven at all and heat never escaped. It seems that 350° F is too high a temperature to bake eggs. I now recommend baking the bread for the first 20 minutes at 350° F then reducing the temperature to 325° F for the remaining baking time to avoid risking an egg burst.

Happy Easter!
My revised recipe for whole grain Italian Easter Bread is posted here.
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