Happy Buddies Made Beautiful Filled Breads

When choosing a bread to bake as Kitchen of the Month, it's almost always a balancing act of finding something that presents a bit of a challenge, but not making it something that will not seem worth trying. On top of that, it's Spring! At this time of year when holidays, the garden, the end of school and similar things make it tougher to find time for baking, it's a wonder if anyone bakes the bread of the month, so I thank each of the Buddies who took the time to make these beautiful breads.

The main challenge of the Romanian Easter bread was to fill the braid strands. Those filled strands make lovely swirls in the finished bread, help keep the bread fresh longer, and taste so good, too.

All in all, it sounds like the Babes who baked the bread liked it and the Buddies did too. There were some great fillings and even some different shapes. One of the things I think we all found out is that this bread has tremendous oven spring!

So, in alpha order, our April Buddies!:

Carola of Sweet and That's It made a beautiful, long braid with a nice drizzle of icing on top and she used some spelt flour and flaxseeds in the bread and made an almond filling that included raisins. Look at those swirls of filling!

Judy of Judy's Gross Eats baked a picture perfect braid using organic coconut sugar, two rises, and an almond filling that made lovely swirls in the slices.

Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories baked Cozonac! She is a bread geek and loves that a Romanian likes her Romanian braid. I would love that kind of comment, too. She had awesome gluten strands in her braid, partly from the oven spring, and she used hazelnuts for a very European filling.

Kelly of A Messy Kitchen created a group of coiled buns instead of a braid, similar to shaping of ensemaidas. Changes included using some spelt flour, some sourdough starter, some olive oil for part of the fat and pecans for the nuts! Beautiful buns with the filling peeping out.

Sandie of Crumbs of Love made her own poppy seed filling which included milk, honey, sugar and butter. Short braid strands made a beautiful compact loaf with luscious ribbons of poppy seed filling running through. Very much the kind of filling that is typical for Easter breads in Europe.

Again, thanks for Baking with the Bread Baking Babes Carola, Judy, Karen, Kelly and Sandie! Look forward to baking again with you next month.  XO, Elle