It seems there was an awful lot of celebrating going on in March, and I have the breads to prove it. This month’s BreadBakingDay #08: Celebrate! found 49 53 people in 15 countries making breads in honor of official and unofficial holidays, personal triumphs, special people, and more. Now I have the honor of presenting them all to you.
First let me thank Zorra (1x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf) for originating and managing this wonderful monthly event. I am passing the hosting baton to Astrid (Paulchens FoodBlog), so keep your eye on her blog for the announcement of the new BBD theme on April 6.
And now without further ado, I give you, in the order they arrived in my mailbox, the most stunning collection of celebration breads ever assembled anywhere:
Sarah from What Smells So Good? celebrated a snow day by experimenting in the kitchen. She created soft, slightly sweet Thai Dinner Rolls and Variations using leftover coconut milk.
(Oshawa, Ontario, Canada)
Bee and Jai from Jugalbandi made Puran Poli. This flatbread with a sweet lentil filling is is an important part of the festival menu in India for religious events, to herald the new year under the lunar calendar, and to celebrate the new harvest.
(Northwestern USA)
For St. Patrick’s Day we have Irish Soda Bread from Sandie at Elixir Bakery. She was pleasantly surprised with how well the raisins work with the bread’s texture and caraway seeds.
(Fort Worth, Texas, USA)
Kevin from Closet Cooking also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with Irish Soda Bread, the perfect accompaniment to Irish lamb stew.
(Toronto, Canada)
Akane from Albahaca y Canela made Czech Easter Buns, which are traditionally baked on Good Friday and served for lunch with coffee or tea.
(Murcia, Spain)
The Osterpinze baked for Easter by Petra of Chili und Ciabatta is traditionally cut into three sections to symbolize the Holy Trinity.
(Geiersthal, Germany)
Michelle of Big Black Dog made Almost No-Knead Chocolate Stout Bread for St. Patrick’s Day. She found that the chocolate stout didn’t make the bread sweet but did give it a delicious mild malt flavor.
(Barrington Hills, Illinois, USA)
Laura from The Spiced Life satisified her dad’s longing for the rich Babka of his youth when she baked him this one for Easter.
(Oxford, Ohio, USA)
Deeba at Passionate About Baking was once afraid of yeast, but no more! This Focaccia in a Braid joyfully marks her freedom from yeastophobia.
(Gurgaon, India)
Tommi on The Fresh Loaf made merry with her Onion and Poppy Seed Purim Ring, with savory filling encased in rich dough.
(Arcata, California, USA)
If these Easter Hot Cross Buns are any indication, it looks like Meeta of What’s For Lunch, Honey?, another self-professed yeastophobe, has overcome her fear!
(Weimar, Germany)
Isabella of Mangio Con Gli Occhi may have started a new Easter tradition with these Fantans, because everyone is now asking her to make them again and again.
(Venice, Italy)
Asha at Aroma presented her large Tsoureki Paschalino (Greek Easter bread) to a friend, and used the rest of the eggy, fragrant dough for some smaller variations.
(North Carolina, USA)
Cakelaw from Laws of the Kitchen incorporated mixed dried fruit into sweet dough to make her Russian Easter Bread.
(Australia)
Anna of Were Rabbits baked these egg-adorned Osterpinzen to share an Easter tradition from her native Austria with her Swedish family.
(Sweden)
Nandita of Saffron Trail found that the Saturday morning she spent baking these Hot Cross Buns was more relaxing than visiting a spa!
(Bombay, India)
Susan of Sticky Gooey Creamy Chewy and her mom almost forgot to make the bread in their marathon Easter baking session, but No-Knead Easter Bread saved the day.
(Florida, USA)
For Kay of Kitchen Jouissance, this Guinness Bread is recommended as the best way to add a little Irish to your St. Patrick’s Day.
(Gainesville, Florida, USA)
Silvia of Winter Star tells us that this sweet rich Fugassa (Venetian for “focaccia”) is a traditional Easter treat in the Triveneto regions of Italy.
(Faedis, Italy)
Zainab and Meedo of Arabic Bites baked date-filled Saudi Klejah to wish their mom happy Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on March 21 in the Gulf and Arabic regions.
(Jubail Indl City, Saudi Arabia)
Y of Lemonpi found that baking this Challah was the perfect way to celebrate an unexpected long weekend.
(Sydney, Australia)
Boaz of Folding Pain brings us Ozney Haman, a poppyseed-filled pastry that was an important part of his Purim celebrations as a schoolchild in Israel.
(San Diego, California, USA)
Dan at Feed the Yeast brought his braiding skills out of hibernation when he made an Easter Braid for the first time in 10 years.
(Stockholm, New York, USA)
Tracy from Vanilla Bean Cafe recommends Irish Soda Bread to accompany a pot of hearty Irish stew for St. Patrick’s Day.
(Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
Laura of cake and anarchy adorned her Sourdough Egg Circle (her first successful sourdough!) with naturally-dyed eggs to celebrate the equinox.
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA)
Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe fondly remembered baking with her mum as she made these Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday.
(Melbourne, Australia)
Cinzia of Cindystar garnished her savory Easter Colomba in Volo (“dove in flight”) with tomatoes and capers.
(Bardolino, Lake of Garda, Verona, Italy)
Alexandra gives us a great photo tutorial on creating Easter Bread Bunnies from sweet yeasted dough on her blog, Addicted Sweet Tooth.
(New York, USA)
Ulrike of Küchenlatein found a dove-shaped tin in which to bake her Colomba di Pasqua (Easter dove) with cherries and chocolate chips.
(Northern Germany)
Lien of Notitie van Lien shaped her Colomba Pasquale freeform and gives us an excellent photo tutorial on the shaping.
(Netherlands)
Shellyfish of Musings From the Fishbowl celebrated St. Paddy’s Day with Irish Soda Bread , which she and her little Guppy enjoyed for a delicious quatre heures (tea).
(France)
For Easter, Cristina of La Cucina di Cristina baked Cozonac, a traditional holiday sweet bread for which everyone in her native Romania has a family recipe.
(Italy)
Danielle from Gathina na Cozinha topped her Easter Colomba with a lovely cinnamon glaze.
(São Paulo, Brasil)
Miri of Peppermill used fiery vathalkozhambu thokku in the Cream Cheese and Coriander Spiced Bread she baked for Easter.
(Delhi, India)
Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen twisted marzipan-filled strands together for her sweet Paasbrod, an Easter bread from the Netherlands.
(India)
Cristie of Edible Antics made colorful Easter centerpeices with her frosted and unfrosted versions of Twisted Easter Egg Bread Rings.
(Wisconsin, USA)
Andrea from Andrea’s Recipes expanded her horizons by baking Irish Freckle Bread, a potato bread with dried fruit, for St.Patrick’s Day.
(Virginia, USA)
Chriesi of Almond Corner combined her braided bread and Hungarian beigli and came up with two-filling Walnut and Poppy Filled Braided Bread for Easter.
(Zurich, Switzerland)
Dulmina of Dulmina tündérkonyhája (Dulmina’s Fairy Kitchen) made both sweet and savory versions of her filled Easter Bread.
(Szeged, Hungary)
Our illustrious founder Zorra of 1x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf baked her Amaretti-glazed Easter Celebration Buns in baking paper nests.
(Andalucia, Spain)
The eggs in the Challah she baked for Easter symbolize new beginnings to Erika of Tummy Treasure.
(Northeast Wisconsin, USA)
Celebrating the first day of Spring was Aneta of Ucztyjac…, who baked herb-filled Wiosenny Chleb.
(Warsaw, Poland)
Happy Baker SaraLynn served her Irish Soda Bread Muffins with a Blarney Breakfast Bake and O’Larry’s Skillet Potatoes for a St. Patrick’s Day feast.
(USA)
Melissa of Mightymuffinblog.com found the dough for her Artos Greek Celebration Bread so luxurious she wanted to make bed sheets from it!
(Atlanta, Georgia, USA)
Judy of Judy’s Gross Eats recalled a special high-school teacher with Kulich in celebration of Russian Easter.
(Ventura, California, USA)
Helen of Hel(en)’s Kitchen used sliced almonds to define the feathers on her Easter Colomba di Pasqua.
(USA)
Isis of Yambalaya missed out on making Easter bread because she was in Monaco meeting Princess Stephanie, so she made these Cardamom Rolls to celebrate spring instead.
(France)
Chasoqueen of Chaosqueen’s Kitchen gives us Gubana, an Easter bread from the Friuli region of Italy. Check out the ingredient list for the filling!
(Lübeck, Germany)
Jacqueline‘s parents must have been delighted with the Woven Honey Vanilla Challah she baked for their March birthdays.
(Burlington, Vermont, USA)
To celebrate holidays and every day, Brigida of Briggis Recept Och Ideer loves to bake Ground Durum Wheat Bread, which takes a nice cool overnight rise.
(Garda Lake, Italy)
Elizabeth of blog from OUR kitchen shaped sweet dough into an Apricot Roll and a 5-Strand Braid, in celebration of the end of winter, bakers and BBD, and Zorra’s birthday.
(Toronto, Canada)
Harini of Tongue Ticklers tweaked a cookbook recipe to come up with Herbed Cheese Braided Bread, in celebration of the long break for Id, Holi, and Easter.
(India)
My own entry took Hot Cross Buns back to their ancient origins to celebrate the Spring Equinox.
(Northern California, USA)
So there you have it. We celebrated by braiding, filling, rolling, and crossing. We celebrated with eggs, sugar, butter, fruit, and nuts. We celebrated with love, joy, and happy memories. We celebrated with bread!
thank you, dear susan, for organising this.
everything looks so beautiful, what a great variety of breads! i really wanted to participated and was down to the wire yesterday and had my biga all ready, and then realized i didn’t have any more yeast! but hopefully i can join you all next time!
Thank yo for hosting this event! What wonderful entries!
Ooh, I see a lot of experimental baking coming up in the near future!
What a treasure chest of fascinating ideas and recipes. Thanks for organizing and thanks to all contributors!
😉
PS: It’s good to see it wasn’t just me who got over a fear of yeast for this BBD… *waves to Meeta*
What a wonderful round up!
Oh boy I do not think I can wait for the next easter, st. patrick’s etc. to make some of these. great roundup!
Wow, let’s celebrate! Thank you Susan for this wonderful roundup and thanks to the participants, too.
I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this page over and over whenever there’s an excuse to celebrate anything. (Hey… the car started this morning! Time to make some… ) It’s fascinating to see how (and what) everyone celebrates.
Wonderful round-up. Thanks very much for all your work on this. You’re a perfect host.
What a great selection of breads. It’s helpful to have them all in one place, too.
Susan, what a great roundup! There are so many wonderful entries! Thanks for being our host this month.
There are a lot of new ideas coming up with this great round-up. Thank you, Susan!
These all look awesome! Thanks for the great write-ups.
Susan thank you so much for taking the time to present all these amazing breads accompanied by such lovely descriptions! I have already made a list of everything I want to try… I think everything… better buy more flour…
What wonderful ideas from all over the globe!
All these holiday breads look scrumptious! Thanks so much for collecting them all in one place!
Great round-up and great recipes! This was the first time I’ve participated in BBD, and not the last one, I’m sure 🙂
great roundup!
Thanks Susan for being our host this month.
It was wonderful to see breads from all over the world converge here- thanks for the email reminder to come check this out 🙂
Susan,
Thanks for hosting BBD. It’s a great theme, and a great roundup!
Well done everyone! What fabulous looking bread.
-Elizabeth
P.S. I like your style, Hel(en)!
My mouth is watering. Can’t wait for the weekend to try at least one (or maybe even two) recipes.
thanks a lot for this great round up.
What a wonderful round up! I am so sorry to have missed on on this event. I had planned to do a Peruvian bread, but just couldn’t get to it in time! I will have to look these over more carefully as some look really delicious! Thanks for doing this!
Dear Susan, what a gorgeous array of celebration breads!
I am so sorry I could not participate, I was going to submit a fried yeasted pastry for Purim.
But my family and I all came down with influenza, I was not up to baking anything. Because of the flu, our Purim was not good at all, unfortunately.
-manuela
Sheez, I missed it. Again! I’m such a dork! Lovely round-up Susan, what a great array of breads!
wow! what a beautiful and delicious collection! There are some breads here that I simply must try to make…
I wish I had known about this sooner, I would have loved to share the bird-shaped dinner rolls I made for our easter dinner this year!
What a wonderful way to celebrate bread, Susan. I love the variety the event has thrown up. More so, because I’m not that intimidated by bread-baking any more. Must have been hard work…you certainly rose to the occasion! Great round-up!
Wow what a great variety of breads. Great theme once again, Susan 🙂
Terrific roundup Susan and a fun theme which generated lots of different breads.
Hi Susan,
I too had sent an entry….and it doesn’t seem to there in the round up. Could you just let me know whether its there? Here’s my entry anyway:
http://tumyumtreats.blogspot.com/2008/03/herbed-cheese-braided-bread.html
A little concerned as I am into events for the first time!
The breads up there are really nice and I appreciate your hosting it!!
Susan,
Had sent you an entry too. Can’t see it here. Would you like me to resend it?
Aparna
What lovely breads! It’s difficult to choose which ones to try – probably the sweetish ones as I have a sweet tooth.
Same here – sent an entry on March 22nd, does not show up :-(.
Maybe spam folder?
Here would have been mine: http://addictedsweettooth.net/?p=100
Alexandra
Thanks a lot Susan!! I delete mails regularly and couldn’t find the initial one, so I just mailed you again saying that I probably did not mail you initially. Seeing that others too had a similar experience made me feel so much better!! I saw you on my live traffic feed yesterday!! 🙂 Thanks for the visit, and God Bless you for introducing me to so many droolworthy blogs like your own!!
thanks for a great round up susan – these events are so great for me in reminding me of so many other ways people are celebrating around the world as well as my own traditions – gives me lots of inspiration for trying new ideas
Cristina, Aparna, Harini, Alexandra: I’m so sorry I overlooked your entries in the original roundup — thank you for alerting me, and they’ve been added now.
Again, thanks to everyone who participated to make this such a spectacular collection of breads!
Thanks, Susan. No problems, I guess this happens when there are so many entries.
Thanks for hosting this month’s edition. This is one event I really enjoy baking for.
Wonderful collection Susan, love to try some of these.Thanks for hosting!:))
Susan, what a wonderful round-up! The variety is fabulous and the entries are beautiful! Thanks for hosting this month.
Lovely round up Susan!
I eagerly scanned through all the yummy stuff and then realised my entry wasn’t there. As is obviously going to happen, if absent minded people like me blog about how they are sending this bread to BBD and then FORGET to mail the entry!!
Anyway, next time I guess – but it was fun baking for this!
Miri, yours is here!
dear susan…
thank’s for hosting!
I’m very happy to be part of it all…
baci, brii
For sure Susan you got celebration breads. This is now a rich resource! So sorry I missed this one.
GREAT round up. I wanted to join, but my oven’s broke.