Greek Christmas or Easter Bread

I love reading "foodie" books and I've been wanting to try my hand at baking panettone ever since reading about food in Italy. Since I've never eaten panettone, I have no idea how close this recipe is. All I know is - it was good!

This recipe was the most challenging one of the book so far. Not that it was difficult, it just took far more steps then most of the recipes. The dough was easy to handle and smelled good enough to eat even before baking!

The panettone recipe in the book includes many variations. I chose to make the Greek Christmas bread. In this variation, the panettone dough had spices, walnuts, and dried cranberries added to it.

The classic shape for the Christmas bread is a boule or round loaf with extra dough used to form a cross on top.

There is too many steps in this recipe for me to make this every day but it was fun to do for a special occasion and the directions were quite simple to follow.