Easter Bread in the bread machine

I used this recipe on the dough cycle of my bread machine and left out the anise seed. I also used bread machine yeast rather than active dry yeast. Dough was divided into 3 ropes; braided it; placed it on parchment lined cookie sheet; covered it with a teatowel and let it rise in slightly warmed oven for approximately 3/4 hour until double in sie. Baked it in a 375 Deg F. oven for 35 minutes. After cooling, covered with icing made of milk, icing sugar and lemon juice. Makes an extremely large loaf. Excellent results.

I also used my bread machine for dough only, had to add a bit of flour to keep it mixing without sticking. I didn't have anise, ground up some fennel seed and added after it had mixed for about 5 minutes, could have doubled that. Wow, did my kitchen ever smell good with the zesting, juicing and grinding! Had to punch down and shape with quite a bit of flour as the dough is so rich and sticky. Baked in a heavy casserole and doubled the bake time, probably should have used a more open round pan as it needed lots of rise time and baking. Dense, moist loaf with great flavour, great crust. Similar to my Mennonite roots and our paska. Will make again.

I loved this bread (a little too much, to be honest)...such a great combination of flavors. The recipe was too large for my bread machine, and puffed over the top a bit...so next time I'll probably do as another reviewer did and bake it in the oven after letting the bread machine knead it for me. The finished product was very fluffy, with a large crumb, and was very moist (I'm sure because of all of the butter in it). Thanks for sharing this...it was so good!

I made this for Easter. The loaf was really dense and dry. The taste was o.k. - not very strongly flavored.