German Easter Bread

To go straight to the recipe for German Easter bread, please click here!

You may know that in Germany, the main meal of the day is lunch, with a backup of Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) in the afternoon. That is true, especially on weekends. However, it´s different on Easter Sunday. On this day, food and for non-churchgoers often festive activities in general, are all cetered around breakfast. The centerpiece on the breakfast table is a German Easter bread – a sweet and fluffy yeast bread, symbolic, but also yummy!

Braid, Wreath and Knot – the symbolics of a German Easter bread

The Easter braid or Easter wreath, often with colored eggs on it, is a popular ornament on a family´s Easter breakfast table. Yet many people are not aware of its symbolic meaning, so let me explain it to you! (Should you not be a Christian, please do not feel preached at – like many Germans, you can just enjoy this bread for its taste and as an ornament, of course.)

Bread and braid

• First of all, it is obviously a type of bread, which points towards Christ as the bread of life. Though most people cut it with a knife, it would actually be more convenient to break it into pieces. Breaking the bread together reminds Christians of the Lord´s Supper. And indeed, people eat an Easter bread in company, hardly ever alone. It is not an item that bakeries sell around easter time, but people bake it at home specifically for their family´s Easter breakfast.
• It is braided from three strands of dough. The three strands in one bread symbolise the triunity of God. But they also take up the more ancient meaning of the number three: Past, present, and future. “Christ yesterday, Christ today, Christ for ever and ever”.
• The braid can also be seen as a knot, since the three strands become one on both ends of the Easter bread. The knot is a very ancient symbol of eternity, but also of the course of life through all its intricate windings and interweavings with everything and everyone before, after, and around. Christ is with us through all the ups and downs of our lives – but also: We ought to bear in mind that we live in community with everything and everyone. We did not come to life out of ourselves, and we should not be living just for ourselves.

Wreath and eggs

• The aspect of eternity is strengthened if the Easter braid is bent and connected into a wreath. But the wreath, or ring, symbolizes even more: Eternity, as I said, along with unbreakable faithfulness. The wreath also symbolises a crown – Christ is king, God replaced the crown of thorns with the crown of glory. A ring is also a two-dimensional depiction of a globe: Christ has been made king of all the world.
• Eggs, often put onto the bread, are more than just decoration. Originally a symbol of fertility, they also symbolise new life – an object that looks like a lifeless stone, and has no door, white like a tomb (in the ancient Orient), but suddenly a chirping, living being comes out of it!

An object that tells a story

You can see that the symbols in a German Easter bread originally stem from pagan times. This is something very normal for European Christianity: People kept using the ancient symbols of their culture and interpreted their meaning in a Christian context. This has nothing to do with “stealing” symbols: The same peoples, even the same individuals kept using them. Nor with incorporating paganism into Christian theology: Religions differ and in many ways contradict each other, but all of them are views on the same human condition, they all make the same observations and interpret them differently. Which interpretation is right and which is wrong, is a different question.The Easter bread is simply an object that tells a story, if you know how to read it, just like wall paintings and stained glass windows in a church, or like the Jewish seder meal. It may have existed before Christianity reached Europe, and may have been a symbol of renewed life and fertility at the beginning of springtime. But to Christians, it tells a new and different story.

Easter Breakfast in Germany

A German Easter breakfast is quite frequently an Easter brunch. Those who do not go to church may choose to have a good sleep before dressing up and laying the table. Those who attend the festive easter service at 10.00 may have to have their easter breakfast as an actual breakfast. But those who prefer to go to the early service at around 5.00 AM have the choice of having their Easter breakfast right after the service – sometimes at church – or taking a little nap and then having an opulent and long lasting Easter brunch.

What to expect on a German Easter breakfast table

The “good” table cloth, silverware and China

Most people lay their Easter breakfast table very festively, even more so than at Christmas. They get out the “good” white table cloth that is reserved only for the highest occasions like confirmations, baptisms, weddings and the like. My mom did not even iron hers herself for fear of scorching it or not getting it to be absolutely smooth – we carried it to a lady who worked a laundry ironer (finisher) in her basement. The steam finishing also gave it a glossy surface. On Saturday, ,my brother and I would help polish the silverware while our mum would be washing her china dishes by hand. My own family luckily does not own these items (but no dishwasher, either)! I do put on our traditionally embroidered tablecloth and our best cups and plates, though.

The Easter bouquet, or Easter egg tree

The most conspicuous decorative item – in itself full of symbolic meaning – is the easter tree or easter bouquet, a bunch of twigs with green leaves,usually cut from hazelnut or willows. This is the place to hang all those blown-out eggshells that children paint or adorn in other ways in the days before easter, at home, but also at many primary schools. In some regions, there are very intricate techniques for embellishing Easter eggs (which is then a thing that adults do as it requires a lot of skill). Many people bring such eggs from their holidays or from fairs, but not to replace the children´s own works of art.

Eggs can be the only kind of ornament on an Easter bouquet, but there may also be other items like wooden bunny figurines etc.. The easter tree can be too big to put it onto the dining table, but it will be in a place where everybody can see it during the breakfast, Families living in a detached house often decorate a bush near the entrance in addition, usually with plastic eggs (it´s windy at this time of year and the eggs will fly off the bush more than once).

German Easter food

A German easter breakfast, at least in my region, is nothing like a regular German breakfast. If you don´t know -a regular German breakfast is just one or two buttered slices of rye bread with jam, cheese or some type of meat on it, accompanied by a cup of coffee, black or herbal tea. On weekends the bread may be replaced by fresh bread rolls/buns (Brötchen) and the jam may be .

There may be some rye bread on the Easter breakfast table for those who prefer savory food. But in addition to jam and chocolate spread, cheese, Salami and ham, there may also be sliced cucumber, tomatoes and pickles.

Colored eggs

There will definitely be lots of hard boiled eggs, dyed in bright colors. Dying the eggs is something children (and even many teenagers, though they may not say it openly) look forward to weeks in advance! The dying can be done in the days before Easter – hard boiled eggs keep for quite some time. Supermarkets sell them boiled and dyed, but I find those pre-boiled eggs a bit dodgy (who knows how old they actually are…). And the dyeing is fun, anyway.

Cake for an Easter breakfast – but no chocolate eggs

Some people have roast lamb for lunch on Easter Sunday or Monday, but that is not very common. But many eat “lamb” anyway – a cake in the shape of a lamb. You can see it on the breakfast table on the picture up here (click). You can easily order such a cake mould if you would like to make a lamb cake yourself, e.g. here (no affiliate link, just information).

Chocolate eggs? More than enough, but not on the breakfast table

Families with children don´t usually place chocolate eggs on their easter breakfast table. There will be plenty of them after breakfast! Children (and adults) look forward to the easter egg hunt. Very many people combine it with their easter walk. Only if it´s too rainy will the egg hunt take place at home – in the living room, our throughout the house! Some German regions have special customs regarding the easter eggs: For example, an egg race (letting eggs roll downhill as a competition), or an egg fight. No, not throwing eggs at each other – just two children pushing the ends of their eggs against each other as hard as they dare to to. The one whose eggshell breaks loses his egg to the other child. We don´t do any of that in my region, but my family usually follows the easter bunny into the forest where we have a long and adventurous egg hunt. We have had all kinds of weather on Easter Sunday – from snow to rain to sun and 25 grade Celsius (77 F).

Easter bread – a yeast bread with additions

But back to breakfast. There are different recipes for German Easter bread, but it is always made with yeast, relatively moist and heavy (in terms of actual weight). Some make it with marcipan, some with raisins. My recipe is with almonds, which is also common, You can add raisins according to your own taste – I don´t take any because my children don´t like them in cake or bread. I make a relatively big Easter bread (for two adults and three children), of course you can take only half of everything.

Recipe for easy German Easter Bread

Note that you should bake this bread on Easter morning! It should be really fresh. You will see that it´s quick and easy. If I need it early, I make the dough right after getting up, then there is enough time for the other steps in between getting dressed, church, and laying the table. Don´t prepare the dough on the night before, it may turn bitter over night! If you don´t feel like baking early in the morning, it would be an alternative to make two small easter breads in advance and put them in the freezer.

Ingredients

700 g flour (all purpose flour will be fine, but you can also take pastry flour. Your Easter bread will be even better if you take 350g spelt wholegrain flour and 350 g white spelt flour).

300 g finely ground almonds (white, ground without the brown skin)

2 sachets (14 g) of dried yeast

2 tbsp brown cane sugar (or regular white sugar)

2 egg yolks

chopped almonds – ca. 100 g or as much as you like; optional: a handful of raisins (soak them in apple juice over night)

Lukewarm water (in case of doubt about the right temperature, it´s better to use water that is too cold rather than too warm. Cold water just means a longer time for the dough to rise, but water that is too warm kills the yeast so the dough will never rise at all) – about 400 ml but read instructions closely!

What to do

Fill 600 g of the flour into a wide bowl, add yeast, sugar and ground almonds (and raisins). Stir well.

Add water. Begin with 300 ml of it, stir it in with a spoon. (If you want to use your hands at this point, of course you can do that. I don´t like the dough sticking on my hands so I start with a spoon.) When you have got to the point where there is a lump of dough and some dry flour left out of it, add some more water. Stir (or knead) it in. Repeat as often as necessary. Should you find eventually that your dough has become too sticky, add the remaining 100 g of flour. It´s not a tragedy if you have to add some more flour on top of that. You don´t need to add more yeast (that is no longer possible now), the dough may just need a little more raising time.

Knead well with your hands, then put the dough back into the bowl and cover it with a clean cloth. Leave it to rise for about an hour.

After an hour, knead the dough again (if it´s too sticky, dust it with some flour). Then divide it into three strands and make a braid, If you like, you can join the ends of the braid to make a wreath. Brush the braid or wreath with eggyolk and strew chopped almonds on it.

Put it on a lined baking tray in the middle of your oven, or a bit lower. Turn the heat up to 175 grade Celsius (350 F, or 3 on a gas stove). Check after 25 minutes. Your easter bread should be ready when it is golden brown and the almonds are a light brown, but not very dark. If it feels too soft to be ready but it´s already getting brown, cover it with a baking sheet and bake for a few more minutes. Your Easter bread may eventually need up to 40 minutes, but do check early!

Eat your German Easter bread warm, with butter and/or jam!

Many families are so stuffed with their Easter breakfast, colored and chocolate eggs that they don´t feel like eating much for supper (let alone lunch) on Easter Sunday. But luckily, there is a choice between a festive hot meal on Easter Sunday or Easter Monday. I will post a suggestion for that shortly – but it´s with wild garlic (or spinach as a replacement), which needs to grow a few more days. You can probably see that I did not take the easter braid pictures myself, because I really bake this special bread only on Easter Sunday. But that will be different with my Easter lunch/dinner suggestion.

In the meantime, you may like to read more about German holiday traditions in this collection of posts on Christmas an New Year´s Eve. Or perhaps you would like to check out some more recipes – after all, there are still quite a few regular meals to prepare before Easter comes around!

What is a traditional Easter dish in your country? Please let us know in the comments! And please feel free to share your experiences with the above recipe as well.