How to Make Twisted Star Bread
Updated: Oct. 19, 2022You want your dessert to light up the table, but you also don't want to face an 18-step recipe that takes up nine hours of your Saturday. We've got you covered with this impressive star bread.
If you’re one of those people who have high baking aspirations but question the depth of your fancy baking skill set, then this star-shaped twisted bread is for you. It’s one of those desserts that appears far more complicated to create than it actually is. (Much like our Dulce de Leche Cheesecake.)
At the outset of this recipe, it may appear like you’ve made a jam-filled piece of origami—but don’t despair. Once you cut, twist and bake, you suddenly have something that would make Mary Berry speechless. Add a light dusting of powdered sugar for perfection. You’ve just become the star baker of any get-together, my friend.
Watch Us Make: Twisted Star Bread
Ingredients:
- 1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 3/4 cup warm whole milk
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3-1/4 to 3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup seedless raspberry jam
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- Confectioners’ sugar
Instructions:
Step 1: Make Your Dough
First, dissolve the yeast in a quarter cup of warm water. In a separate bowl, combine your milk, egg, butter, sugar and salt before adding the dissolved yeast and three cups of flour. Now, a fancy schmancy professional mixer will do a great job here, but I’ll have you know I don’t own one of those, and mixing by hand worked just fine. If your dough is gooey, make sure to keep adding flour a little bit at a time until it’s soft and forms a dough ball.
Tip:Â We tested the most popular brands to find the best stand mixer. See our Best Loved Brand.
Step 2: Get Messy with It
Cover a surface of your house in flour. A clean, flat countertop or pastry mat will do. Make sure, if you have young children in the house, they help with this. They will look at you wide-eyed when you ask them to put flour all over the counter. This will be the best day of their lives. Knead your dough ball until it is properly relaxed and stress-free. This takes about 6-8 minutes. Place it in a greased bowl, turning once to lightly oil the top. You don’t want the dough to stick to the bowl as it mutates into a giant dough ball. Let it take a nap for an hour.
Step 3: Your Dough Is HUGE
Well, it’s twice the size it was before. We don’t condone violence, but this is where you punch the dough down. Punching it releases the gas bubbles formed by the yeast, giving the bread a finer texture. Kids everywhere would also like to volunteer to help with this step.
After you’ve shown your dough who’s boss, put it back on the floured surface (hopefully you didn’t clean up yet) and divide the dough into four pieces. Roll one into a 12-inch circle. It’s OK if this circle is neither concentric nor perfectly round. We’ll take care of this later. Transfer it to a greased 14-inch pizza pan. In case you’re curious, you can also place it onto the greased back of a really big cookie sheet if you don’t own a pizza pan. I may have done that.
Spread a third of your jam on this dough circle to within an inch of the edge. Repeat this process twice, layering dough and jam and ending with your final dough circle.
Alternate idea: Fill with your own homemade Spiced Pear Jam.
Step 4: Make It Pretty
If your layered dough is not a perfect circle because rolling out perfectly round dough circles is a pastry skill you don’t possess, use a sharp knife to cut the edge cleanly around so that it is a perfect circle. Marvel in your genius idea.
Step 5: Do the Twist
Place a 2 ½-inch round cutter on top of the dough in the center, without pressing down. A drinking glass will also do the trick. Make 16 evenly spaced cuts outward from this circle to the edge of the dough. Remove the cutter (or glass). Grasping two strips of the dough, twist them outward twice, away from one another. Pinch the ends of each strip together so your filling doesn’t try to escape. Repeat with remaining strips.
Step 6: Nap #2
Cover with plastic wrap and let your dough nap (er, rise) for another 30 minutes. While this is happening, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake your bread for 18-22 minutes or until golden brown. Ooh and ahh as you take it out of the oven and gape at its beauty. Brush it with melted butter so it’s shiny like a brand new car. Cool on a wire rack before giving it a light dusting of powdered sugar. Instagram it, for sure. Contemplate what other things you put inside it next time you make it. Nutella? Pesto? Definitely not at the same time.
Ready to take on your next baking challenge? Tackle one of these 100 Recipes for Homemade Bread.
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Originally Published: October 15, 2018
