Vanocka is a sweetened braided bread, with full of flavors from Czech Republic and Slovakia. Apart from sugar, this bread also has loads of almonds and raisin to give a sweet hint and has aroma from nutmeg and lemon zest.
This bread involves braiding in three batches, and stacking them all up. They have to be pinned through toothpicks or grill sticks so that the layer don't collapse. The real trick is to equally divide the dough into nine counterparts for braiding, which can be efficiently done through weighing machine.
After baking this yeast-raised bread, there was an strong hint of aroma around my home, resembling the plum cake. Each slice was a bit dense yet sweetened with a lemony flavor. We ended up devouring this beautiful braided bread. Merry Christmas to all, and thanks to Swathi Iyer for suggesting such a exotic bake.
