Christmas bread wreath

When I first saw this Christmas bread wreath in Aurelia’s blog, I knew immediately I’d prepare it. I left the page opened on my browser for days (yes, I am among those who leave many pages open and never turn the computer off).

Let’s begin with Aurelia, that I met online. She is sweet, cool, brave, determined and… super good in what she does. Each time I prepared a recipe of hers I already knew it would please us. So this bread had already a good story behind. This plus the fact that this year I am particularly attracted to Christmas wreaths, and le jeux sont fait! 

This bread is beautiful and tasty. What else? Oh, yes, it is doable! No special expertise required. Just some wish to play in the kitchen maybe with some Christmas song around.

I have to say that, as often happens, I made some changes. Most for the simple reason I didn’t have some ingredients at home and used the ones I had (used a different flour and milk), and I didn’t let the dough rest in the fridge… just because I forgot it inside the oven. 

Below you will find the photos of my step by step. You need some extra steps comparing to a normal bread, but its beauty is worth it for sure.

Ingredients:

first dough:

• 1 1/4 cup bread flour 
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tsp honey
• 0.003 lb. dry baker’s yeast or 0.02 lb. fresh baker’s yeast

final dough:

• 1 1/4 cup bread flour
• 1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 egg + 2 yolks
• 1/8 cup water
• 1/8 cup milk
• 1/8 cup honey
• 1/4 cup extra virgin oilve oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Instructions:

1. Mix all ingredients of the first dough, by hand or using a mixer. Then put it in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap until it doubles in size.
2. When done, pour the first dough into the mixer’s bowl, add flours, eggs lightly beaten, honey, water and milk. Turn the mixer on and when the dough is well combined add salt. At last add oil, letting it fall along the bowl side, slowly. Let the mixer knead the dough until smooth and elastic. You will probably need to “help” the mixer by putting the dough together after adding oil. Let it knead until oil is incorporated in the dough completely.
3. Add walnuts a bit at a time.
4. Put the dough inside a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest until doubled in size.
5. When it doubles, the original recipe says it should rest in the fridge for 4/6 hours or the whole night. I forgot and mine stayed out of the fridge.
6. The day after, flour a work surface and pour the dough onto it.
7. If you want to make small single rolls, make 16 balls of 0.11 lbs each.
8. To make the wreath make 14 balls of 0.09 lbs and 14 balls of 0.04 lbs.
9. Cover two oven trays with parchment paper. Grease two cookie cutters of about 2.7/3.1 in and place them in the middle of the trays (one on each tray). Place 7 bigger balls around the cutter and 7 smaller between the bigger, creating the wreath shape. Repeat on the second tray.
10. Cover the wreaths with plastic wrap and let them double in a warm place.
11. Turn on the oven 428°F/220°C.
12. Brush the wreath surface with milk and spread oat over them.
13. Bake in pre-heated oven for 25 minutes or until bread is golden.
14. You can freeze and then defreeze them a little bit ahead of serving time and warm them lightly before serving.
15. Merry Christmas and buon appetito!