This sweet yeasted bread is perfect for Easter brunch.
. I still tend to see cakes as those baked goods that rely on chemical leaveners, such as baking powder or baking soda. As it’s made with natural yeast from sourdough, mazanec requires the better part of a day to ferment enough to give the best flavor, texture, and sufficient rise in the oven.
In baking the first few trials, the overall flavor was good, but the bread was almost too rich, too soft, and a little too overpowering. I realized that this bread isn’t about loading it with copious amounts of butter, à la brioche; it’s more subtle, and the beauty of this bread is the delicate interplay between all of the ingredients, rather than having one overpower all the others.
For my third trial, I dropped the butter dramatically down to 20 percent of the total flour weight . When I pulled that mazanec from the oven, I knew I was on to something. The bread was soft, supple, and had a beautiful buttery aroma, yet tasted lighter and less overpowering than prior tests. Finding the right level of butter meant bringing this delicate bread into greater balance, allowing the lemon, rum, raisins, and almonds to have their place in the spotlight, too.