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Polish Easter Sweet Bread is its own thing.
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Polish Easter Sweet Bread is somewhere in between cake and bread. It’s a yeast-risen bread, so, as you can see from the picture above, it’s nothing like banana bread or zucchini bread. It’s far more like white bread, but it’s so rich, sweet, and delicate that you’ll be tempted to think of it more like coffee cake. However, it’s not nearly sweet enough to fall firmly into the pastry category. It’s its own thing.
Traditionally, this bread is served with Easter dinner (or as something to nosh on throughout the day), with a soft butter lamb nearby. Very often, one or two of these loaves will find their way into a święconka basket, and so, having been blessed by a priest, will take a place of honor at the Easter dinner. (On occasion, my grandfather used to secretly tuck one or two beers neatly in under the bread, and hence had them inadvertently blessed as well.)
Things like butter, eggs, and sugar (and beer) were, way back in the day, avoided during lent. That could be why a bread like this might be associated with Easter. Or maybe it’s popular on Easter because it makes one hell of a ham sandwich. It’s not really a sandwich bread, but that doesn’t stop anyone: sweet, cake-like bread slathered with mayo (or butter) and piled high with a couple thick slices of cold, leftover ham and iceberg lettuce … it nearly falls apart as you eat the sandwich. It sounds totally wrong, but it’s amazing.
My recipe (thanks to Grandma and Sister Mary Terresita) is barely sweet. I’d be down with you making it sweeter – in fact, I think you should. However, if you make it as sweet as cake, you’ll move it away from its intended character. Same with the raisins: I’ve recommended a minimal amount. I could easily imagine wanting more, but this bread typically doesn’t rival a raisin bread. I like to start this bread in the evening, let the final rise take place overnight in the fridge, and then pop it into the oven first thing in the morning, however, one of my aunts thinks this creates too dense a texture. If you really want a very traditional sweet bread that’s exactly like grandma’s, you may want to heed my aunt’s warning. I balance that opinion against the fact that stretching out the timing seems like a lot less of a burden on my schedule, plus, the longer the rise, the tastier the bread. Indeed, for maximum taste and convenience, you could do each of the rises this way, in which case this Easter bread would, on the third day, rise again…
Makes 2 loaves
Ingredients for the Bread:
½ oz. active dry yeast (2 packages)
1½ oz. warm water (3 Tbs)
16 oz. warm milk (2 cups, nuke 2 minutes, to 120°F), plus 1 Tbs cold milk
7½ oz. sugar (1 generous cup)
40 oz. flour (8 cups)
5 eggs, room temperature (8.75 oz.)
5¼ oz. softened butter (⅔ cup)
¼ tsp salt
Generous pinch of nutmeg
Zest of 1 orange or ½ med-large lemon
3 Tbs orange juice or 1½ Tbs lemon juice
5 oz. golden raisins (½ cup, packed)
Ingredients for the Crumbs:
5 oz. butter, softened (1¼ sticks)
8 oz. flour (3 scant cups)
4½ oz. sugar (1 scant cup)
Directions:
- Sprinkle yeast over water in a large bowl; set aside.
- Pour warm milk over 2½ oz. (⅓-cup) of the sugar and stir to dissolve; cool to lukewarm (about 15 minutes).
- Stir yeast mixture into milk mixture and add 15 oz. (3 cups) of the flour; mix well. Cover lightly and set aside to rise in warm place for an hour, during which time it should rise significantly and appear bubbly. In the meantime, prep the remaining ingredients; by the time you’ve finished, you should see some activity in your poolish. If you don’t, place it in a warmer spot for the remainder of its rise time.
- Beat 4 of the eggs until thick and lemon-colored (about 1 minute on med-high speed). Add remaining 5 oz. (⅔-cup) sugar, butter, salt, nutmeg, zest, and juice; mix, ramping up to med-high speed, for about 1½ minutes (mixture will not fully homogenize). Add yeast/milk mixture and raisins; mix. Mixture will be the consistency of a thick batter. Add enough of the remaining flour to turn the batter into a dough-like consistency, to the point that the paddle is no longer effective (or, if by hand, the dough will become too thick to stir). Dough will be very sticky and too fluid to form into loaves. Allow the dough to rest for 20 minutes.
- Then, continue adding flour and knead just until the dough is right on the threshold of no longer being sticky. At this point, continue to knead, but resist adding more flour. Total kneading time: 10 minutes if using a mixer, 20 minutes if by hand. (If using a mixer, note that the dough will not clear the bowl.) Place in greased bowl; let rise in a warm place 1½ hours or longer, during which time it should increase in size significantly, and should feel warm, soft, and airy.
- Meanwhile, make the crumb by mixing all its ingredients together with your hands until it forms clumps, or use a mixer, ramping up to high speed until fine crumbs are formed. (If there is leftover juice from the lemon, feel free to add it to the crumb, compensating for the added liquid with a bit more flour.
- Punch down risen dough. Form into loaves and place in greased bread pans. Combine the remaining egg and milk and brush the loaves carefully. Distribute crumbs, and gently push them into the dough. Cover loosely with buttered plastic wrap or foil. Let rise until the dough starts to overhang the sides of the pans, about 45 minutes (or overnight in the refrigerator). (If dough was refrigerated, let it sit out on the counter while the oven preheats.) Bake at 350°F for 55 minutes or until hollow when tapped. De-pan immediately. Cool completely on racks. Do not slice into it until it’s cooled to room temperature, or perhaps has a barely detectable amount of remaining warmth.
Polish Easter Sweet Bread
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I grew up calling this “sweet bread.” In the big world of the internet, adding the words “Polish” and “Easter” helps narrow the definition to something useful. Some people call this bread “placek,” and others “babka bread.” However, the former is a very broad term, and the latter is strongly connected with coffee cake. • Credits for all images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Hover over image and/or green text to reveal pop-up information. Click those items to jump off the deep end.
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A truly wonderful loaf of bread Jeff. We find the combination of nutmeg-raisins and lemon zest really interesting! Is lemon the traditional fruit used, or do people also use orange? We’re asking this as both of those are used in Greek desserts and cakes and we’re wonder if this is also the case in Poland.
Kudos for the delicious recipe, have a wonderful week ahead!
In fact, my grandmother’s recipe specified orange as a substitute! Isn’t that interesting?
Hi! I’ve been trying to find a good recipe for this bread and your’s seems the most similar to what my family is used to. I have some questions before I make the attempt. Do you have an estimate for how much flour is used in total? It looks to me like the 8 cups is an upper bound on the amount, but it still seems WAY too much for 2 loaves. My other question is related, what size are the loaf pans you used? Thanks so much 🙂
Hi Bob, thanks for your questions. It’s a lot of flour, but the loaves are massive. You can see from the way that they domed that they rose to almost twice the height of the pans. They’re 9 X 5 pans, by the way. Here’s the thing: I made these loaves the way my grandmother did, which was more-or-less by feel. As soon as the dough feels right, you stop adding flour. I figured, after making them several times, that I needed to have about 8 cups available, but I never used that entire amount.
Add the flour slowly, and try to make sure it’s fully incorporated before adding more. Each time you add more, you want to add just enough to get rid of the stickiness. Don’t be in a rush. Be patient and let it take time.
There are more scientific ways of baking bread, and one day I’d like to convert this recipe to one of them. But there’s also something kind of charming and satisfying about doing something old-school, the way it was done for hundreds or thousands of years.
Beautiful bread.
Thank you so much, Rima!
Hi Jeff. I’m very excited to try this new adventure. Bobka was always a family tradition in my home.
Question, did you ever try putting a cheese filling into it? If so, when would be the time to add it in?
Thank you for sharing. Happy Easter.
I’ve never added a filling! I bet it’d be delicious, though. I’ll have to give some though about when to add it.
Excited that my dough is rising as I type. This picture of this bread looks much like what my mother-in-law used to make. Long-standing custom of both raisin and a walnut version of this (nut filling done jelly roll style) also meant she had no recipe to share. I made it with her once and I hope this is a great Easter surprise for my children Thanks for sharing this recipe..
I’m go glad! I hope it turns out to be what you hoped for.
Jeff,
A MAN that bakes! YESSSSS! I am going to try this today! I make bread and I was taught by my mom and made it better than she did. Patience was her downfall! I bake all the time and it is the one thing that calms me in the kitchen! The resulting smells are awesome! Continue with the great recipes! I have bookmarked your page waiting for more!
Thanks, Jeff!
David Monaghan
Thanks, David! There are tons of guys who bake – glad to count you among them. I’d love to hear about what you’re baking!
This sounds like my mom’s recipe! She used orange zest because lemons weren’t available all the time in WV! Thanks for posting! I’m excited to try it!
Thanks, Rita!
This is an awesome recipe! Easy to make, I slightly over baked it so it was a touch dry.
Oh, easy to do. But I think it’s still very good if it’s a bit dry. Thank you!
I’m baking this bread tomorrow with a friend. We’re baking 3 batches. She’s never baked with yeast before!
Oh, fantastic! It’s a great bread!
I’ve used my Great Aunt Charlotte’s raisin bread recipe since she showed me 40+ years ago. It is a very similar heavy bread not very sweet and a sprinkling of raisins. I was looking to downsize the recipe from 9 loaves to 2 and I tried a Lithuanian recipe last year. My brother (determined it should be a Polish recipe) found your recipe last year and said “make this”. Little does he know but our family is a mix of Lithuanian and Polish. I really liked the ease of your recipe and rising it overnight. Neither Aunt Charlotte or my Mom would have approve of the citrus flavoring. As my sister said the zest reminded her of a danish and not “our bread”. However everyone gave it rave reviews for use in a ham sandwich.
Maybe I’ll give it a try at Easter with no zest. I’ll probably get complaints when they go for a ham sandwich.
Thanks for sharing your recipe!
First of all, let me tell you how glad I am that you tried this recipe, and that you cared enough to tell me how it went. Thank you!
Like you, I started with a recipe that produced an absurdly large number of loaves! To get it down to two required more adjustments than simply dividing the ingredients. In the process, I upped the citrus, because it seemed to come down to such a small amount that it hardly seemed worthwhile. So maybe do try less zezt; I’ll bet your family will like it that way. And I bet it’ll still be good with ham!
Aside from the citrus, I made other changes, too – like the refrigerated rise. I think it improves both the texture and flavor of the bread. My aunt, though, did not care for those “improvements.” That’s how traditions are in families, of course.
On a side note, your brother doesn’t know that he’s part Lithuanian and part Polish? I hope he doesn’t return to this post!
My brother likes to joke about what “dad said about being 100% Polish” and he also likes to give me a hard time when I make changes to traditions. This bread is our tie to our Mother at Christmas. From Ancestry we can see some names have been changed so Dad didn’t really know. We belonged to a small Lithuanian church, maybe a clue. No matter….all good people!
BTW I made 3 loaves out of your recipe to match the size I normally make. I’m also hoping this smaller batch baking will encourage siblings and their children to bake their own!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you, too!
Bob, I cannot wait to make this bread today. One question, when I rest the dough for 20 min., do I keep it in a warm, draft free place?
Ah, you must be getting ready for Easter! Yes, warm (as in 75 degrees if you can) and draft-free. (And I’m Jeff, not Bob.)
Bob, another question. Is it possible to just use egg yolks? My grandmother only used the yolks.
I’ve never done it, but I have a feeling it’d be fine.
Very much like my great grandmother’s sweet Easter bread which I made today. I increased the raisins and crumb topping.
What part of Poland did your family, and this recipe, come from? Mine came from Kurowo.
My family came from the Warsaw region. I’ve always thought that more raisins sounded like a good idea.