Recipe: Kulich - Russian Easter bread

Recipe: Kulich - Russian Easter bread.

Ingredients:

     For the dough starter:

* 300 ml milk 

* 400 g flour

* 40 g yeast

     

     For the dough:

* 600 g flour

* 50 g butter

* 150 g sugar 

* 100 g raisins

* 50 g ground almonds

* 2 eggs

* 50 g bread crumbs

* salt

     

Method:

Bring the milk to boil and then cool down until lukewarm temperature. Stir in the yeast and flour and leave your dough starter to rise for about 2-3 hours. 

Once the statrer has raised and and increased in volume approximately 2-3 times add warm butter, sugar, raisins, ground almonds, whisked eggs, flour and salt. Knead the resulting dough until it stops sticking to your hands (30-40 minutes), then cower with a kitchen towel and leave to raise for another 2-3 hours.

Coat the inside of a high baking tin with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Place the dough in the tin so that it would fill  about 1/2 of it and leave to rise one more time.

Dilude a bit of whisked egg with water and brush the surface of the bread (you can skip this step if you intend to cover the kulich with frosting after it´s baked). Decorate with strips of dough, whole almonds, raisins and candied citrus zest. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 1 ½ - 2 hours.

You can cover the baked kulich with an icing.