Braided Sweet Bread

"Braided sweet bread: a soft milk based dough (optionally filled with raisins, dried fruit or chocolate), painted with egg yolks and baked until golden. It’s time we bond with bread again. Braided sweet bread is universal. It’d be a tough ordeal to find a culture that doesn’t have a version of it in its repertoire. Assessing the roots of this soft comfort food, then, is as difficult as figuring out the origin of bread itself. What’s curious though, is that for all of its prominence, this braided sweet bread waits for the holidays (usually Easter), to show up on our dining tables. I say we put it back in the regular rotation!"