I wonder frequently what languages I plan on speaking with my child when I will have one. Will I speak to it in English, the language I think in most of the time, Icelandic, the language in this country, or German, technically my mother tongue.

Being half-Swiss/half-Icelandic there has always been a question of what nationality I feel the most. People ask me this a lot and sometimes mention things that I am not enough of an Icelander because of different reasons and the same thing goes for the Swiss side.

I can never really answer these questions because I can’t say what makes me especially Icelandic or what makes me especially Swiss, I am just a mixture of both, a braid of two very similar but quite different cultures.

What I do know, is that my future child will get to enjoy the good things from both of the countries, and one of those is Butterzopf.

The Butterzopf takes a lot of time, but for the most part that time is just letting it rise.

Ingredients

• 1 kg flour
• 12gr (one packet) of active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 150gr butter
• 5dl milk
• 1 egg

Preparation

1. Melt butter and add most of the milk to the melted butter. Heat the milk/butter mixture until lukewarm and add it to the flour and salt.
2. Whip together egg and one table spoon of milk lightly with a fork. Add 2/3 of it in the dough and use the last part for the bread itself.
3. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, when the dough is ready it is smooth and beautiful.
4. Let it rest and rise for 90 minutes.
5. After 90 minutes, punch it down and let it rise for another 30 minutes.
6. Split the dough into two parts and roll them out to equal long strands.
7. Now it is time to braid the bread. I used the video below. It took couple of tries.
8. Let the braid rest for 15-20 minutes (or as long as your oven needs to get hot)
9. Paint the bread with the rest of the egg mixture.
10. Bake in 200°C oven for 40-50 minutes or until golden brown and has a hollow sound when you knock on its bottom.

Since it is a enormous bread I cut it into couple of pieces and froze it. When I then wanted some bread I just removed it from the freezer and waited for it to thaw.

That is it for today!

-Katrin