Mazanec
Czech Easter Sweet Bread- Yield
- 1 round loaf, about 9 inches across (12 slices)
- Active
- 40 minutes
- Total
- 4 hours, including rising and cooling
- Difficulty
- Medium
The story
Mazanec is the Czech Easter loaf: a round, sweet yeast bread made with butter and egg yolks, studded with raisins and almonds, and marked with a cross cut into the top before it goes into the oven. Its dough is close to that of vánočka, the braided Czech Christmas bread, but the round shape and the cross belong to Easter. Czech households bake it on Bílá sobota, Holy Saturday, together with the lamb-shaped beránek and the savory nádivka, so that the Sunday table is as full as possible. On Easter Sunday, Boží hod velikonoční, bread, eggs, meat and mazanec were taken to church to be blessed, and the family then ate the blessed food together. Mazanec was also a common gift for the koledníci, the carolers who went from house to house with willow whips on Easter Monday. In 2027 those three days fall on March 27, 28 and 29. The loaf keeps well for several days, so one bake on Saturday covers the whole weekend. Serve it sliced with butter and honey for Easter breakfast, or with coffee in the afternoon.
Ingredients and method
The full recipe, with US and metric measures and stand-ins for hard-to-find ingredients, is part of the Easter edition. Buy it once and keep the PDF.
Want to try first? Frankfurter Grüne Soße is free to cook.