Swiss Butter Bread Braid
Make on Fresco
Traditional Swiss Zopf – Buttery Braided Bread Recipe, slightly sweet, but makes the most awesome toast when no longer fresh and hot from the oven.
Swiss Butter Bread Braid...Trying saying that three times in a row and fast!!
This is an easy recipe, and as you know I am a bit mad on yeast. The satisfaction of a dough coming together and the homey smell of a baking loaf of bread is hard to beat. SO rise to the occasion and get mixing...
If you love a beautiful braided loaf but want something richer than challah, this Swiss Butter Bread Braid, traditionally known as Zopf, is your new weekend bake.
Soft, fluffy and enriched with butter (rather than oil), Swiss Zopf is a classic Sunday bread in Switzerland. It has the elegant plaited look of challah, but the texture is more tender, slightly richer and unmistakably European.
This is the kind of loaf you bake when you want your kitchen to smell like a Swiss bakery. Perfect sliced thick with salted butter, turned into French toast, or used for the ultimate sandwich.
A Traditional Swiss Sunday Bread
Zopf dates back several centuries and is strongly associated with Sunday morning breakfast in Switzerland. Historically, white flour and butter were considered luxury ingredients, so this enriched braided loaf was reserved for special occasions rather than everyday meals.
It is still commonly referred to as Sonntagszopf, literally 'Sunday braid.'
The Symbolism
The braided shape isn’t just decorative. Historically, braiding symbolised unity and connection. There’s even a (slightly morbid but fascinating) medieval theory that the braid evolved from an old burial custom where widows would symbolically braid their hair and place it with their husbands, though food historians debate this origin story.
Whether folklore or fact, the braid became embedded in Swiss baking tradition. And no one in my house is complaining about tradition, when this arrives hot and fresh on the table on days other than Sunday!
Need
- 50 Grams butter BUY
- 300 Grams whole milk BUY
- 500 Grams bakers or strong flour BUY
- 20 Grams dried yeast or 2 sachets
- 2 Teaspoons sugar
- 1 Teaspoon pink salt flakes BUY
- 1 eggs beaten with a drop of milk
Do
- 1
Place butter and milk into Thermomix bowl and warm 2 min/50ºC/speed 2.
- 2
Add flour, yeast, sugar and salt and blend 10 sec/speed 6.
- 3
Knead 3 min/dough setting/Interval.
- 4
Turn out onto Silpat mat and wrap. Allow to double.
- 5
Preheat oven to 220ºC on a bread baking setting if you have one…(this is not fan forced, but rather conventional).
- 6
Divide the dough into three (or 4) and roll each piece into a long sausage. Join them at one end and braid them. Allow to prove until looking nice and plump. Brush with egg wash and prove a little longer.
- 7
Bake 120-25 minutes or until golden and shiny. Cool before cutting.
Tenina Holder is a wife, mother of five and grandmother of nine, who started cooking in the olden days before Thermomix was even a thing.
Tenina has become the premium go to source for all Thermomix expertise and of course fresh and easy recipes that work. Her cooking classes and foodie trips are sold out in literally hours, her cookbooks appear on the Australian best seller lists and her social reach is in the millions. Her Insider Club is the most fun you can have with a Thermomix and you really should join her! She believes chocolate, butter and salt are health foods. Her food positivity mantra is, eat everything, just not all at once!
