Oh. I am sooo making this tomorrow. :) That looks great, Floyd! I wonder how it would taste with fresh boysenberries and cream cheese? I think I'll try that and report back.

Ok. I did two of these this evening. :)

On one, I followed your recipe exactly (cause' the hubby wanted blueberries).

On the second one, I did a mixture of gold-raspberries, orange zest and juice (instead of lemon), and a shot of Bacardi Rum. :) It smells absolutely wonderful.

Yum... that sounds great!

If you get any good snaps, post them in the forums.

How do I post them?? Is it the same tags as LJ? I'm going to upload them to photobucket right now...

It looks like you figured out how to post images.

In case anyone else is wondering, there is an answer in the FAQ.

I made this formula this past weekend and it turned out very well. Also the intructions were easy to follow. If you have haven't tried it, you have to do so!

Variations are now crossing my mind... the dough could be used for cinnamon rolls or maybe sticky buns. Perhaps diced cooked apples in autumn. Or maybe persimmons?

There was a fermentation lesson imbedded in the experience: The Twin Cities are having a heat wave and the ac could only do so much... Boy an 85 degree room will really pop the yeast! The doubling took only an hour. I was afraid that the fast rise might harm the flavor, but it was fine.

Just another variant on the stuffing.

I made this last weekend and WOW, was it good. Instead of blueberries, try:

2 cups of freshly cubed Granny Smith apples
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup BROWN sugar
1 cup walnuts
1/3 cup corn starch
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tbsp. butter
In a small pot, combine; butter, brown sugar, and chopped walnuts. Stir until combined. Add apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and corn starch. Combine and heat until you get a gooey concoction. :) The goal is to get the nuts a touch roasted...the apples will finish baking in the oven.

Use in place of blueberries in Floyd's recipe. Sprinkle the top of the braids with a little cinnamon/sugar on top of the final egg wash. :)

YUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

That sounds excellent.

All I have are frozen berries. Dare I try this with the frozen ones? I'm afraid they'll turn to mush when I make the filling. The dough has already been in the fridge for 2 nights so I'm already pushing my luck...
Luvs2bake

This was my first attempt at a filled bread and boy did I learn many things! I made one braid recently but didn't realize that a slack dough would not work here until it was too late. My braid was disfigured as I transferred it from my work surface to the baking sheet for its final rise. I also forgot to let the cream cheese to come to room temperature so it remained as chunks even though I tried to melt it in the microwave. My mother described my finished loaf as Chinese BBQ pork because the egg wash created a very dark brown crust and my loaf looked like a monster. But I'll definitely try again; it tastes wonderful! I'll quarter the recipe next time since no one else wants to touch it (it's their loss) and bake for half the time. Thanks for the recipe!

Wow, this is a good loaf, just came out of the oven 3 hrs ago & half of it is gone! I only made 1 loaf though, too much for a family of 4, my girls loved it, so did hubby ! My first attempt in making a filled & braided loaf, it was very pretty ! As blueberry is rather costly, I used bluberry pie filling, had no problem with it, line a piece of baking paper under the dough before braiding it, had no problem transferring to a baking tray. Thanks for the great recipe !

Costco sells 4 lb frozen bags of a mixture of blueberries, rasberries, and marionberries that is very cheap and came out great when I made this braid. I also use them with cereal after defrosting a handful in the microwave.

hi
i tried above recepie but vain
tell me ture method for soft and delicious bun or bread
tellme what is differcence between dough & sponge above mention receipie. i tried both that was not good and kept raw.
i prepare both receipies and mix sponge paste and dough paste but no result better plz inform me ture and good recipies
abbas

You mention paste. Please don't forget to knead. If you do it by hand, working in flour will give you a more elastic and cooperative dough. Sponge is the part of the recipe that prepares the flour and the dough ingredients are then added to it. You might want to read through the "lessons" part of the site for general information. Hope to hear from you again and good luck! :) Mini Oven

hi abbas,
There are a number of good recipes on this site that u can try but it would be better if u begin with the lessons. At the top of this site there is a menu, select the lesson option n u will open to the place where Floydm has elaborated step by step lessons on bread baking. You can start with his bread recipe in the first lesson all quantities are given in detail.
Sponge in an initial mixture of flour(maida)yeast and water which is allowed to ferement for say an hour to 1 whole day(depends on your taste)and then more flour, water, oil, salt etc. are added to make it into a dough(something like kneaded dough used for making chapatis I mean atta). But this dough is more soft and elastic than atta. Then it is allowed to fermet(Khamirna) which is also called rising. After the first rise this dough is again punched down n the loaf shape is formed(or any other shape that one fancies)n allowed to rise again, when it is doubled it is baked. N WOW u have great bread.:)
Hope this was useful.
shi

I can't find cream cheese can some one suggest a substitute. I have full cream(clotted) at home can it be used to make cream cheese.
shi

Shi,

Since I don't know where you are located or what may be available in your markets, take a look at this link: http://www.foodsubs.com/Chefresh.html

It gives several possible substitutions for cream cheese. Maybe one or two would be available to you.

hi
i have read lesson but i have been failed to understand. plz give me ur basic receipie making bread. becasue there is too long lesson.
i will try my best to understand ur basic receipie.
below mentioned ingridents i know very well but i can not use their measuremen.
i am writting which is basic i hope u will amendment
2 cups flour, add 1 tablespoon yeast, 1 cup warm milk, 5 table spoon butter, 1/2 tea spoon, 1 egg, 2 table spoon suger.
all ingriednets mix well and let rise about 2 hour than bake about 45 mins.
i think that is best way for bread and bun.
if u have ur perfect receipies plz write, i want make my bread in home rather than purcahsed from market.
thanks alot 4 ur cooperation

Made it yet again to-day for my cafe, but this time I drizzled it with an icing flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon bark oil. Yummy and aromatic. Thanks again Floydm for your innovation. Anything else in your bag of tricks?

I made this braid using cream cheese but my braid did not retain its shape and was flat(it was soft and nice never the less). I made one braid using only half of the dough & the rest half is sitting in the freezer. So for my next attempt I want to correct my mistake. Could it be because of too much of filling or could the filling be runny(ha whats that)I mean it had more liquid than needed. Since I had made cream cheese by mixing drained home made youghart and cottage/ricotta cheese it is possible that I might have not drained them sufficiently? Any idea what I did wrong?
Shi

i have been making this bread several times now for the cafe so feel qualified to reply to you. Incidently I have reduced the amount of cornflour for the berry filling (using frozen blueberries) as it was seemed a bit too thick once the braid was baked.
I wondered whether a well drained ricotta would give a thicker product, if you can get it. I have been using a thick ricotta to-day (in NZ) for a cannelloni filling and thought I would experiment to see whether it can be used instead of cream cheese, as it seemed to have a similar consistency. Was your drained yoghurt/cottage chhese/ ricotta mixture thick enough to support the braid before it was baked?

Hi magie64
The braid had started distroting while it was proofing and while baking it became quite flat. So I think that u can say that the mixure was not think enough. Some of it also oozed out during baking.
shi

Hi Shi,
Sorry but I don't understeand 'distroting'

hi maggie,
Actually i spelled the word wrong its "distorting". it means to be mis-shaped or lost its original shape. While the braid was proofing it had stated expanding breadth wise insted of rising up thats why I got a flat braid.
Yesterday I used the leftover half dought to make a chocolate braid with semi sweet dark chocolate . This time is rose beautifully and retained its shape and was soooooooooo chocolatey. So I think the first one was mis-shaped due to excessive filling or the filling being watery.
Shi.

Hi Shi,
Sounds that "all's well that ends well'. Great! I will try out a chocolate centre next time that I will make the braid. I have a chocolate fudge recipe which I use as a centre for muffins ( a mixture of dark chocolate and cream) - can't remember the exact proportions - so thank you for the idea.

I put this together on Wednesday and yesterday morning we had this delicious pastry. Floydd your directions were excellent and I can honestly say they looked professional (which doesn't always happen in my case!} I used Sam's Club frozen mixed berries for one and the apple recipe listed above for the other. I sprinkled raw bron sugar on the to and then baked! They were beautiful and delicious! One question about the filling though, don't you think the cornstarch the corn starch in the mix makes the filling hard to heat with out a huge sticky mess or is this the way it is?? Also can I freeze this dough for later use? If so at what stage should I do so?

Hi Melana, you were probably asking the above of Floyddm - but in the meantime I will add that the "thick sticky mess" of a filling is the best consistency to match that of the cream cheese and strong enough to support the weight of the braid top. I have found that by reducing the cornflour a little - a strong but slightly moister paste results.

Floyddm, Thank you once again for this recipe which is more than ever popular in my cafe. I ran out of frozen blueberries so made the fruit filling by thickening Ocean Spray Whole Cranberry Sauce, and it was just as popular (and cheaper to make) as we export most of out blueberries to Japan now and the price of such is high on the domestic market.

Floyd -

Thanks so much for this fabulous recipe.  I finally got around to baking the loaves this past Sunday.  Kept one for my Mom and gave the other to a friend who is going through a depression right now.  They were a huge hit!  Your tutorial gave me the confidence to believe I could do it and I did!

Oh my GOSH!!!

I'm going to HAVE to give this one a try.  I don't care for blueberries by themselves but I absolutely LOVE them with cream cheese!!!!!
Thank you so much for posting this recipe and an extra thanks for the pics.  I think it would have really hard to figure it out without the pics.  [I love technology :o)]

May your bread always rise!!
mangaholik :o)

My co-workers are getting used to freshed baked bread every Monday morning. They're very good at scarfing up my experiments - this is what they will be getting next Monday. I'm drooling on my keyboard now - the instructions look very simple and are printing right now. As always, thanks for this site and another great recipe Floyd! Trish

can I make both braids and bake one and freeze the other, filled? Or will that ruin it?

Is the filling enough for the two braids?

Or just for one of them? 

If you are making 2 smaller braids I would increase the filling recipe by half again. If you find that you have some leftover, just refrigerate it and add it to the next filling you will make (because the braid is so nice). The filling keeps for at leat 3 weeks in the fridge. Because I make it now and then for my cafe, I always make a large quantity of filling (about 1 L) and have it on tap. I do add a little more lemon juice as the original recipe can be a bit gluggy. I haven't frozen any braids but can't see how the filling would be affected - just the brioche type dough would age a little.

Just noticed some ambiguity in my above posting. I meant that the baked brioche type dough would age a bit with freezing, but a better idea would be to freeze the braid before the second proofing and later thaw and then let rise until it doubles in volume, then bake.

I've made these now three different times in five weeks with terrific results. Many people are astonished at how wonderful the presenation is on these, and are amazed that I made them.

One of the things I've been doing is experimenting with the filling. My fiver-year-old son loves blueberries, but my 11-year-old son hates them. The first batch was true to the receipe and wonderful. The second was made with a lemon pudding instead of blueberries. It was wonderful.

The third was by far the best. I took one of the first ones to my parents and my dad loved it, though he doesn't care for blueberries either. He went into his cupboard and handed me a can of raspberry pie filling with strict instructions to make it the next time I saw him.

At somepoint during the week before I made it, my wife was condensing packages of flour into a container and didn't notice the bag was WW as she started to dump them together. The third batch ended up around 25% WW to 75% AP. It turned out so very tasty that I might start doing that intentionally now. :)

I've been making two braids, and freezing one after I add the filling and do the braid. During the week, I take it out in the evening and let it thaw and raise to double and bake it. So far I've had no problems with that.

Thanks again for this wonderful, simple yet fancy treat.

 hello Floydm. i tried blueberry cream cheese braid and it turned out awesome. received many applause frm my family:) Thanks  to you:)

can u teach more different shapes with some more interesting fillings please. i love to try more shapes......Thank You.

 Is it a must to refrigerate dough overnight, or can it just be left out to rise and bake the same day?  It looks so good, I can hardly wait to bake it!

debbie H

This was excellent.  I also thought the option to use apples would be wonderful.  I am wondering how this will freeze??????????  If it does not freeze well then I would try to half the recipe.   Anyone tried that yet ,  please post and thanks.  Really enjoyed the blueberries.

I am currently baking the braid using the apple filling as suggested by scarlett75! The mixture looks wonderful. My only idiotic move was putting the dough on wax paper when I was rolling it out .. I even read the above comments about NOT doing that and for some reason I still did it! I had a difficult time removing my braid from the wax paper but managed to do so and it still looks good! I'm not an experienced baker so this is all part of the learning process for me! I'll let you all know how it turns out and if it is nice looking enough will post a picture too. Thanks for the recipe!

Linda

mrsmambo,
You should try the apple filled braid with cinnamon bark oil and vanilla flavoured icing. It would match perfectly! M

I made this over the weekend and I changed the Blue Berry to a Raspberry and cream cheese filling and the bread was wonderful.  The kids really like a slice toasted up in the morning for breakfast.  My loaf did not turn out as dark but I only did one egwash prior to cooking because I did not want it as dark but wonderful results and flavors.  Thanks for the recipe and suggestion 

Glorious Cooking and Baking to All

Scooter G Fast

i think this would work very well, but i'm certain it must be drained.

I get artisan ricotta from the farmer's market and it is much much different than the kind at the store; it has a very clean, fresh and vibrant taste and a texture similar to what you get w/ the cream cheese/egg mix. 

I"m going to try it next time but I only had a little bit of ricotta left this week. YUm.