Lemon Braid

Now that we have made our own quick and easy lemon curd from scratch, let’s put it in some yummy bread!  Not only delicious, it looks like you picked it up at a bakery.  It reminds me of those cream cheese breakfast strudels from the grocery store, but with lots more flavor and without the extra yellow #6.

The filling is delicious and you can use other things to fill the braid like keep the cream cheese and lemon curd and top with blueberries.  Or instead of lemon curd use strawberry lemon marmalade or your favorite thick jam.  I would not use anything thin like chocolate ganache or something that will run all over your oven.

Lemon Braid
yield 2 loaves

Bread:
3/4 cup warm water
2 tsp. sugar
1 Tb. instant yeast
1/2 cup (2 oz.) AP flour
3/4 cup plain or vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup (8 Tbs.) unsalted butter, soft
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup (3.5 oz.) sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
5 cups (21.25 oz.) AP Flour
Egg wash: 1 egg + 2 tsp. water

Filling:
5 Tbs. cream cheese, soft
1/4 cup (1.75 oz.) sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup AP flour
1/2 cup lemon curd

1.  Make a sponge:  grab a small bowl and mix together the warm water, 2 tsp. sugar, 1 T. yeast and 1/4 cup flour.  Cover this tightly and sit for 10-15 minutes.

2.  Make the dough: In a large mixing bowl, mix with mixer: yogurt, butter, eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla.  With paddle attachment, mix in the 4.5 cups of flour.  Once it is just combined and shaggy looking, switch to the dough hook.  Knead on speed 2 for 5-6 minutes until the dough is smooth and soft.  Sometimes you need to add more flour here.

3.   Place dough in a large, greased bowl to rise 60-90 minutes.  Cover this with plastic wrap.

4.  Make filling:  mix all the ingredients together in the filling ingredient list except the lemon curd.  Cover and let sit in fridge until ready.

5.  Back to Dough:  Punch gently and divide in half.  Cover one with plastic wrap and the other roll into 10″x 15″ rectangle.  (I fudge the dimensions on cinnamon rolls and stuff, but this you really need to try and get to 10×15″ as close as possible).   *Do not fill the top and bottom 1″.*  Keeping the cream cheese in the center, spread half of it in the middle.  Then spread half of the lemon curd on top of the cream cheese.

6.  To braid:   Cut 1″ strips down the sides of the outside sections where you did not put the filling.  Make sure that each side has the same number of strips.   Cut out the corner sections so that you can fold the top down and braid the bread all the way down to the bottom and fold the bottom piece over the braid.

7.  Repeat for the second braid.  Cover and rise 45 minutes.

8.  When 15 minutes are left in the rise, preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the egg wash on the braid.

9.  Bake 25-30 min. or until golden brown.  Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving or the filling will ooze.

Recipe from King Arthur Flour