Mini Braided Easter Bread Recipe (2024)

Mini Braided Easter Bread Recipe – sweet easter breads with a colored egg in the middle. Cute, festive and easy to make. Soft, stringy bread that pulls away, flavored with vanilla, lemon and orange zest and topped with sugar for a sweet, crunchy finish.

This Mini Braided Easter Bread Recipe is perfect for Easter gifts or to add to your holiday table.

I celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter as well and some of you may not know, but it is this Sunday.

Since I’m on a low carb diet, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bake Easter bread. But a friend told me that my Bulgarian Easter Bread is the best one she’s ever tried, so I can’t afford to not make any this year!

I love baking and using the easiest Easter bread recipe I have, I created these mini braided sweet breads.

Adding a hard boiled colored egg in the middle of each bread makes them fun, colorful and festive. The recipe is straight forward and makes 4 mini Easter breads.

Each bread is enough for 2-3 people, but who likes to share?

ThisMini Braided Easter Bread Recipe is made with yeast and requires rising time and also proofing the yeast. I sometimes use live yeast, but it is not widely available and easily stored, so I made today’s breads with dry yeast. I like to proof it because I hate wasting ingredients…

Ever wonder why won’t your Easter bread rise? I’ve had quite a few failures.

Sweet Easter Bread became my friend in the recent years. Before that, even though I took some lessons from my grandmother, things kept going wrong and my Easter bread dough rarely rose.

Possible issues?

• The yeast is not good. From time to time yeast is not active, has expired or is defective. There is nothing you can do. I’ve never had this issue with live yeast, but as I mentioned before, it is not widely available here in the US, this is why I’ll stick with dry yeast.
• The ingredients are too cold. Temperature matters. They need to be at room temperature.
• The liquid, where you are dissolving the yeast for proofing is too cold or hot. This seems to be a common problem. With my experimenting I’ve found that “luke warm” milk or water won’t do it. I always have to measure the temperature of the liquid and it has to be between 100 F and 115 F. Nothing above – because it will “kill the yeast” or under, because it will not activate it to proof.

Tips for baking easter bread:

• Preheat your oven at least 30 minutes in advance. You can also set a rack under the one you’ll be baking on and place a pan, filled with water. This will create extra steam and make the bread rise even more.
• Don’t over bake the Easter bread. This will make it dry and crumby. Always aim for stringy sweet Easter bread. To achieve that, bake just until done. Toothpick inserted should come out clean and the bread should be golden on top. If the bread starts to brown too quickly, while baking, make sure you cover the top with aluminum foil and continue baking, then remove the foil at the end and let it brown until done.
• Different pans, ovens and bread sizes require different baking time. You need to make a decision and know when to take the bread out.

Optional Easter Bread dough mix ins:

I suggest that you add these after the initial dough rise, before you shape the braids.

• nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts
• raisins
• candied citrus peel (I have a recipe for candied orange peel)

Easter Bread flavorings:

I like to use vanilla extract and lemon zest. The combination is fresh and screams “sweet bread” to me.

Other possible flavorings are orange zest, orange liqueur, rum, almond extract, mahleb (spice), cardamon.