Italian Easter Bread-Guti di Pasqua

by cakeduchess on April 5, 2012 · 48 comments

Baking fluffy and gorgeous bread makes me very happy.

It’s pretty wonderful when you bake something and your husband comes home from work and asks, “I guti di mia mamma! Did my mom send a care package with her Italian Easter bread?”

I felt my goofy smile go from small to gigantic. A huge ear to ear smile graced my happy face as I asked, “Are you kidding me?”

Fabrizio wasn’t. He seriously thought his mamma sent us a care package from Italy with her special bread she makes. Teresa makes this wonderful bread not just at Easter…all year round it can be enjoyed in her sweet kitchen.

You see my in-laws were here last year from Italy for Easter and I am feeling nostalgic. Last year this time the kids and I were baking with Teresa. We were watching my mother-in-law do her magic with my Kitchen Aid. She was doing her best with our ingredients and my kitchen. It somehow isn’t the same when you bake in a foreign country in a foreign kitchen.

Teresa’s bread turned out delicious last Easter. She even baked us up some more before they left at the end of April for me to freeze. To make sure we weren’t going through guti withdrawals, there was more fresh guti waiting for us last June when we arrived in Italy at her house. She spoils us with her bread!

Guti is the name they call this sweet bread in the region of Calabria where my in-laws are from. It is also called cuzzupe, cuddrura, cugghuraci cuculi, cu l’ovu: depending on what part of Calabria you are from, there will be a different name.

I bet in almost every house in Calabria during the Easter holiday you will find this braided bread. A wonderful sweet dough mixed with butter and eggs. The egg symbolizes fertility and also rebirth.

This is a 1/2 day baking project. You could do it in steps. Like color the eggs the day before or the morning of baking. The kids LOVE to help me color the eggs and of course, braiding is a ton of fun!

But the trick is the braiding. The dough strips can’t be too dry. You can only add a touch of flour to the the work space. It is sort of sticky and you have to whip the braids into shape in lightening speed. Teresa has been making this bread since she was a little girl. She could make these braids in her sleep. I’m still learning and I have to say I think she’d be proud of our guti this year.

Here is Teresa in my kitchen last year making one of the wreaths for Easter. I wrote last year about how I almost ruined the guti Teresa made. I rolled the dough with Teresa into mini loaves and we braided them. We made about 8 of these lovely little sweet loaves. Then I turned on the oven to preheat while they were still rising.

I didn’t realize that my Teresa placed them in the cold oven with towels on them to rise. The towels stuck to the tops of our pretty braids. The flavor was incredible, but I ruined the aesthetic appeal of our hard baking work in a quick error.

Teresa really never forgave me and still today mentions this story when she is making her guti.

My friend Juls at Juls Kitchen made a lovely Tuscan Schiacciata.
I came across a lovely blog written by Emiko Davies and she also made an Tuscan Easter Schiacciata.
And my sweet friend Gwen posted a braided Italian Easter bread...Our breads are Easter twins-we even almost dyed the eggs the exact color:)
My lovely friend Reeni from Cinnamon Spice and Every Thing Nice made a gorgeous Italian Easter Bread wreath a few years back.
Proud Italian Cook has a savory Italian Easter Bread that looks really good.

The dough is buttery soft and fluffy. I was not sure about the amount of yeast as she used fresh yeast she brought from Italy last year. If you like you, you could omit the eggs in the folds of the braid and bake it just as a pretty braid with the egg wash. If you are adding the whole eggs into the folds of the bread, you put the eggs in the braids uncooked and they cook while the bread bakes. Another idea is to add some pretty colored sprinkles to the bread after you do the egg wash.

The kids were fighting over the eggs. My favorite egg was the hot pink one. The violet one was also pretty stunning. This bread is perfect for breakfast. I love to dunk it in my steaming hot caffe’ latte or cappuccino.

Italian Easter Bread {Guti di Pasqua}

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
2 packets active dry yeast (two 1/4 ounce envelopes)
4 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
4 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (may need more as mixing)
1 Tbsp. lemon zest
1 tsp kosher salt
8 Tbsp. butter, room temperature (cut into 1 inch pieces)
4-6 dyed eggs

egg wash
1 egg
1 tablespoon water

Directions:

If you are adding colored eggs, now is the time to color them. Follow the dye directions on the box or use natural dye and let the eggs sit for an hour. The longer they site the more vibrant the color.

In a small saucepan heat the milk over medium to 110 F (I just test the water with my finger and know it’s the right temperature…warm like the temperature of a baby bottle, not hot). Add the yeast to a small bowl with the warm milk and whisk it around with 1 tablespoon of the sugar. Let sit until foamy (about 5 minutes).

Whisk in the eggs and vanilla and set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the rest of the sugar, flour, lemon zest, and salt.

Pour the flour mixture in the bowl of a mixer. With dough hook attached and mixer on medium speed, slowly add the milk mixture (*the milk mixture has the milk, yeast, 1 tbsp sugar, eggs, vanilla) to the flour mixture.

Hold onto your mixer! Now you will add the butter 1 tablespoon at a time. I tell you to hold unto it because it will move around if you are mixing it on too fast of a speed. Start on medium-low speed. If you notice the mixer moving too much, you can lower the speed and let the butter get gently incorporated into the dough. If you have the mixture at a faster speed at this point…do not leave it alone while it’s mixing. It could bounce off the counter.

Be sure to mix well when all the butter is added (about 3-5 minutes). You may need to add more flour. Don’t worry about the total amount of flour, keep adding until your dough is stiff and it is not sticky.

Put a little flour onto a clean counter and scrape the dough out of mixer onto the counter. Knead the dough a little and shape the dough into a ball (you won’t be kneading the dough too much…just a bit to shape it into an elastic ball of dough).

Oil a large mixing bowl and place the dough into the bowl.

Rub a little oil on top of the dough and cover it to rest in a draft-free area for a bout 1-1 1/2 hours.

One hour later this is what I found! Wowsers! Nice dough. The dough will be doubled in size.

Punch down the dough.

See that amount of flour? I added too much to work the strips out. Next batch will have a little less flour.

I ended up fixing that middle strip and making sure the 3 strips were even so I could do my braid. If you are making one large braid, roll each piece into strips about 15 “ long. If you are making two braids, the strips will be a bit smaller (sorry, I did not measure the strips).

Pinch the left side together to secure the three pieces and braid the 3 strips. Pinch the other side together on the right to secure it closed.

The fun part is tucking in the eggs wherever you’d like it in between the braids and cover the dough with a kitchen towel for about 40-45 minutes. When dough is about ready, preheat the oven to 350 F. Mine was ready to bake at 40 minutes.

Whisk together the egg and water for the egg wash and brush it on the dough avoiding the eggs.

Place the dough on a parchment lined baking pan and bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. (The first batched I baked at 375 and then I lowered the temperature at around 17 minutes to 350 for the remaining minutes.)