spring star bread with vanilla flavored rhubarbs

This star bread is a real spring dream, perfect for your spring gatherings! Filled with vanilla flavored rhubarb compote and marzipan, the flavor of spring is here to nourish your tastebuds. By leaving out butter and incorporating whole-wheat flour, the bread is more nutrient dense than you’ll typically find but still so very delicious. Though it looks sophisticated, I promise you it really isn’t difficult to make. I’m walking you through the steps below and if you’re more of a visual learner, I’ve created a tutorial for you on IG that I hope you’ll find helpful. Feel free to leave out marzipan, if you’re not a marzipan lover!

Ingredients

Dough:

200 ml lukewarm water

35 g yeast

1 egg

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

1 tsp vanilla powder

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp fine salt

190 g white whole wheat flour

180 g all purpose flour

Filling:

300 g rhubarb compote, find recipe here

80 g roughly grated marzipan

Directions

Dissolve yeast in the water by stirring. Whip in egg. Add white whole-wheat flour, oil, vanilla, sugar and salt and mix well, preferrably on a stand mixer. Add all purpose flour bit by bit, starting at low speed. Turn up the speed and let the machine knead your dough for 5-10 minutes till dough releases from sides and bottom of bowl and curls around the hook. Cover the bowl and leave to rise till the dough has doubled in size, it takes approx. 1 hour.

Transfer the dough to your lightly flour coated counter top and with a table scraper or a very sharp knife, cut the dough into three equal sized pieces. Roll out each of the three pieces to a thin circle and transfer one circle to a piece of parchment paper.

For a video tutorial on how to make the star bread from here, watch my video on IG. I’ve divided it into 2, for part 1 click here, part 2 click here.

Otherwise read along for description. Spread the filling on one of the circles, add the second dough circle, spread the filling on this too and finalize with the top dough circle, leaving it without filling.

At the centre of the circle, place a round cup approx. 7 cm in diameter. From this, cut the dough into 4 equal sized parts. Cut each of the four parts into four strips, leaving 16 strips.

By using both hands, you lift up two strips and twist them away from each other one and a half round. Repeat with the remaining strips, giving the star 8 points. Pinch the dough ends and fold them under the star.

Transfer the parchment paper to a baking sheet and bake at 200 degrees Celsius for 18-20 minutes until golden.

Optional: Dust with powdered sugar.