Russian Kulich

While reading a neighborhood bulletin board, I stumbled across a post from someone requesting used coffee cans to bake her family’s holiday kulich. Having seen bread baked in cans, yet not being familiar with “kulich”, I did some research and learned that it’s a Russian and Ukrainian yeast bread used to break the fast on Easter. A symbol of atonement, the bread’s shape carries several religions meanings. It’s an interesting and very important bread, and I soon found myself obsessing over can sizes and molds so that I could make a loaf myself.

Kulich is similar to babka, brioche and panettone. It can be baked in a deep cake pan, a panettone mold or in cans. Its high proportion of butter and eggs makes the texture light and rich at the same time, and it tastes good at room temperature or slightly warmed. Traditional spices include cardamom, saffron, and citrus; while add-ins include but are not limited to candied orange, vodka soaked raisins, toasted almonds and chocolate chunks. Like babka, kulich comes in a variety of flavors and the composition of the dough varies from recipe to recipe.

For my first kulich, I chose an interesting recipe with a dough calling for 8 egg yolks with two stiffly beaten whites folded in. The recipe makes two loaves, but I halved it so that I wouldn’t have to use so many yolks. That, plus I wasn’t sure about the blend of spices which in this case were orange, cardamom and vanilla. Cardamom is generally not my favorite, but I was going for a European flavor. For the add-ins, I used rum soaked raisins, chocolate chunks and almonds. Unfortunately, I could not find any candied orange or “citron” (it’s usually only around during Christmas until they put it on clearance in February and it finally disappears), but I figured the orange zest would do the trick.

I’ve made this twice. The first time I used a panettone mold and the second time I made smaller loaves using two 29 oz pumpkin cans. I left off the icing thinking the chocolate would keep it sweet and because I like to warm these types of bread in the toaster before serving. I love icing, but don’t miss it at all. However, it is traditional so you may want to add it.

So now our freezer is full of kulich and I’m looking for a Russian friend to do a taste test. The spice blend I’d worried about turned out great, and the egg yolks gave the bread a slightly yellow hue, stiff texture and lovely flavor. I’m not sure what the beaten egg white did, but Bernard Clayton uses that same technique in his French bread, so I imagine it added volume or increased air pockets during baking. As for the chocolate, I don’t regret using that at all! It melted throughout the dough and made the bread completely dessert worthy.

Given how much time kulich takes, you might want to just make the full recipe from About.com. However, if you only have 4 yolks to spare and are interested in a different blend of spices, here’s my version.