Honeyed Beehive Bread

One for a party perhaps, or as a centrepiece table decoration, it is a quite edible, semi-sweet bread

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Ingredients

	For the dough:
300 ml	water, lukewarm
2 sachet	active dried yeast
120 ml	honey
1 ¹/₂ tsp	salt
115 g	butter or margarine, melted
2 medium	eggs
700 g	plain flour
	For the Glaze:
1 medium	egg
1 tbsp	water
	For the honey butter:
115 g	butter, melted
2 tbsp	honey
1 tsp	lemon zest

Method

Preparation time: ca. 40 min Resting time: ca. 2 hrs / Grade of difficulty: medium / Calories per portion: n/a

To prepare the dough:
Warm a stainless steel bowl by tilting out with hot water. Fill in the 300 ml lukewarm water and sprinkle the yeast over the surface. Stir in honey, salt, butter, eggs and half of the flour. Beat until smooth. Add half of the remaining flour and mix well together. Add sufficient of the remaining flour to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and pliable. Form into a ball and place into a greased bowl. Cover and allow to rise in a warm place for about 1½ hours until doubled in size.

Knock down the dough, divide into 20 equal portions and then form each portion into a rope of about 20-inches, 50 cm long. Select 2 of the ropes, twist them together and press both ends together to seal. Repeat for the remaining pieces.

To shape:
Thoroughly grease the outside of a 2-2 ¼ litre ovenproof pudding bowl or similar and turn it rim down onto a greased baking sheet. Starting from the rim of the bowl, wrap a braid around the bowl. When wrapped, take the next braid and pinch its end to the previous braid. Wrap around the bowl. Continue with the remaining braids, covering the base of the bowl in a similar fashion. Cover loosely with a tea towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 30-40 minutes.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5, 190ºC, 375ºF.

To glaze:
Mix the egg and water together and brush over the braids.

To bake:
Bake for 35 minutes or until done. If browning too quickly, loosely wrap with foil. Cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes. Form a length of kitchen foil into a ball of about the same size as the bowl. Place the foil on the rack. Carefully remove the bowl and then place the bread over the foil to continue cooling. Only when completely cool, remove the foil.

To serve:
Mix the ingredients for the honey butter. Serve the beehive bread open end down together with the honey butter in a bowl or individual small bowls for dipping.