Eggless Slovak Easter Bread - Paska

Hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving with your dear ones. Now that Thanksgiving is over it is time for everything Christmas-y. But. Oops ! I have a East European Easter Bread for you today. As a compensation I decorated it to look more Christmas-y.. with leaves and berries just so that you do not think that I forgot about Christmas all together and jumped to spring..

I baked this Slovak Easter Bread as part of Gayathri's Baking Eggless Challenge wherein the challenger presents the group with a eggilious recipe and challenges everyone to convert it into an eggless one. This month Gayathri of Gayathri's Cook Spot challenged us with this sweetish butter bread East European Bread. The original recipe was for 3 7 inch round loaves and used 3 large eggs. I decided to make 6 peeps and a 6 inch round loaf and so made only one third of the recipe using whole wheat flour and all purpose flour in 1:1 ratio and yogurt + a pinch of baking soda as a substitute for one egg. The whole wheat made the bread slightly dense, nevertheless it was tasty. We had it with spicy curry for Thanksgiving and enjoyed it much. 

With its buttery deliciousness this loaf will look grand at any holiday table. Be it Christmas or Easter. The peeps of course look more Easter-y so its best to reserve them for spring...

Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread

Food gawker and Taste-spotting are pretty addictive... don't you think ? Once your first photograph gets accepted you want all your food photographs to appear there.  One.It invites traffic. Two. It is strangely satisfying to know that a group of experts consider your food to be as gawk-worthy as you thought it was... But with that first acceptance comes the next stage in a bloggers life .. the big chase... the one that sets a blogger running from one window to another  for that perfect streak of light. The frustration grows when the sun refuses to budge and finally the blogger has to settle for less. It was like that for me yesterday. It was raining cats and dogs and I just could not manage a well-lit-gawk-worthy shot... frustrated, I called up mom and she reminded me of this Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread.....

Back in October, I had baked this loaf along with Joyce, Lena and Zoe. It turned out great. Pretty. Soft and fluffy. We loved it. So I made a second loaf for my sister. Her in-laws were visiting at that time and they were pretty impressed by it. Her mother-in-law immediately took the recipe from me and in one of the recent family gatherings told my mother what a good baker I had become :)  It felt good to be complimented by an ace baker as her..  so I thought it wouldn't be such a bad idea to publish this recipe even though the photographs aren't so great....

Now the recipe that won me praise.... Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread... a bread that is great for gifting, or sharing at festive breakfasts or brunch. The original recipe is from Wiiliam-Sonoma. I tweaked it to bake an eggless loaf.