Preheat the oven to 50°C 122°F (Basically the lowest setting on your oven.)
Break the egg into a small bowl and mix.
1 egg
In a separate bowl, mix r two tablespoon of the mixed egg with two tablespoons of the lukewarm milk. Leave in the fridge to rest.
250 ml milk
Add the yeast and sugar to the rest of the lukewarm milk, stir and leave to rest for 10 minutes. The yeast should start to create some bubbles at the surface.
2 teaspoon instant yeast, 70 g white sugar
Add the flour, butter, salt and remaining egg to a bowl. Pour in the yeast-milk mixture. With a hand-or stand mixer knead the dough for about 10 minutes until you achieve a smooth dough.
500 g plain flour, 80 g butter, ½ teaspoon salt
Place the dough into a bowl and cover with a moist tea towel. Turn off your oven and place the bowl with the dough into the oven. Leave for about 1 hour. The dough should have roughly doubled in size.
While waiting for the dough to rise, you can prepare the marzipan-almond filling. Melt the butter. Mix in the marzipan, almonds, sugar, melted butter and milk. I like my marzipan quite crumbly so that you bite into bigger bits of marzipan. You can also mix it into a smooth paste if you prefer.
200 g marzipan, 200 g ground almonds, 50 g sugar, 50 g butter, 6 tablespoon milk
Once the dough has risen, roll it out into a rectangle. Do this on a floured surface, or on a non-stick silicone mat. The size of my rectangle was around 30 x 40 cm (12″ x 16″).
With sprinkle or spread the marzipan-almond paste on the rectangle. Then roll up the dough – along the long edge. The dough roll should be of an even thickness. Place the roll onto the tray lined with baking parchment.
With a sharp knife, cut the dough roll into two. Now wrap the two strings around each other and shape them into a wreath form. Cover and leave to rest for a further 10 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 160°C or 320°F.
Just before placing the easter bread into the oven, apply the milk-egg mixture with a brush. Sprinkle on the slivered almonds.
3 tablespoon sliced almonds
Bake for about 45 minutes. To check if the bread is done – prick the middle with a skewer. If it comes out clean, the bread is done.
Leave to cool before serving. If you like you can dust the cake with some icing sugar. Tastes great with butter and jam.