St. Lucia's Bread Wreath Crown

When I saw these Lucia buns with saffron on Pinterest, I immediately had to think of my friend Lucy, whom I visited recently in her new house. St. Lucia Day on December 13 had certainly passed already, but I still liked the idea a lot. However, I like to give bread and salt for house warming parties, and thus I continued to search for Lucia bread and found something even better: a sweet bread in the form of a braided crown with candles on it! Lucia is derived from "lux", Latin for "light", and in Sweden they have a tradition that on Lucia Day, that the eldest daughter of the house wears a crown with lighted candles, because Holy Lucia probably wore a crown of candles, to have her hands free when she brought food to other pursued Christians. So we had Lucia bread and salt for my visit :-)

Ingredients for 1 large and 1 small wreath:
250 ml milk
125 g butter or margarine
500 g flour
1 package dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
100 g sugar

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 beaten egg

Raisins for decoration

Energy: 3272 kcal total

Preparation:
Melt eat milk and butter in a saucepan or in the microwave. Mix flour and yeast in a large bowl with the dough hook of the hand mixer, add all ingredients including salt and knead to a smooth dough, which separates well from the bowl bottom, possibly add a little flour. Allow the dough to rise until its volume has doubled, about 1 hour in a warm place or, in my case, overnight in the fridge!
Especially for this recipe, I had bought saffron threads, measured and crumbled them, but added them only to the final dough. Maybe that's why it was he was not really yellow? I guess that it would be better to add the saffron to the warm milk!

Remove one third of the dough and set it aside. Cut the rest of the dough into three parts and roll the parts into about 70 cm long strands, weave them into a braid. Arrange the braid in a wreath on a baking tray lined with baking paper and firmly press the ends together.

 


Brush the braid with whisked egg, decorate it with raisins and bake it for 25 minutes at 180 ° C. Do the same for the dough that was set aside, the strands should be about 50 cm long and the baking time is about 15 min. Let the wreaths cool on racks. 


Stack the cooled wreaths onto each other, add candles and salt, and there is the hostess gift ;-)