An impressive bread wreath for a festive table! The yeasted bread rolls are made with sweet potato, to give them an orange tint and to make them a bit more chewy. Embellished with a pesto swirl, they go perfectly with a baked camembert for dipping.
This recipe aired in my Xmas Baking show on RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg in December 2022. You can find the recipe here in Luxembourgish.
For the buns:
125g sweet potato
325g flour
1 ½ tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
10g sugar
1 tsp salt
90ml milk, lukewarm
10g yeast
40g butter, melted
1 egg
white pepper
1 Camembert
For the pesto:
30g pistachios, shelled
30g basil
20g parmesan, grated
1 small garlic clove, peeled + crushed
40ml olive oil
salt and pepper
For the glaze:
30g butter, melted
To finish:
1 tbsp white wine
Pomegranate seeds
Makes 1 wreath with 11 buns (+ 2 extra to eat right away) – Rising: 1h30m – Oven: 25 min
Prick the sweet potato, microwave on high (800W) for approximately 7 minutes until cooked through. Leave to cool, then scoop out the flesh.
Put the flour, sugar, rosemary, salt and a pinch of white pepper into a large mixing bowl. Put the milk in a jug and crumble the yeast into it, stir to dissolve.
Pour the yeasty milk into the flour, add the melted butter and the egg and knead for 5 minutes to get a smooth dough. Shape the dough into a ball, put back in the bowl and cover the bowl with the tea towel. Leave to rise at room temperature for 1 hour, so the dough doubles in size.
Meanwhile, make the pesto: put all the ingredients in a small food processor and whizz to a pesto.
After 1 hour, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knock back by briefly kneading it. Roll out into a rectangle of approximately 50 x 30cm. Spread the pesto all over the dough, then cut the rectangle in half, so you end up with two smaller rectangles of 25cm. Starting at the long end, roll up each rectangle into a sausage. Trim off the ends, then cut into 11 pieces of a similar size.
Put the camembert onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Prick the camembert all over with a knife. Arrange 11 dough snails around the cheese, and put the two end bits next to the wreath on the baking tray. Cover the baking tray with a clean tea towel and leave to rise for another 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan, remove the teatowel from the tray and bake the wreath for 25 minutes.
As soon as the wreath has finished baking, brush the surface with the melted butter.
Stir the camembert, add a glug of white wine and stir again, then sprinkle with pomegranate seeds and serve immediately.
