Stringy Kozunak (Bulgarian Easter Bread) — Bread Machine

1. Dissolve the sugar in the lukewarm milk (~35°C). Add 2 Tbsp of the sifted flour to part of it and stir to a slurry, then crumble in the fresh yeast and leave to activate (get foamy).
2. Meanwhile, lightly beat the 3 room-temperature eggs, add the rest of the milk and half of the melted fat (the blend of the three fats described above).
3. Add the essences, rakia, liquid sweetener, vanilla, and the activated yeast. Stir.
4. Set aside 100 g of the flour. Add the rest to the wet ingredients a spoon at a time, then pour the mixture into the bread machine.
5. Depending on your machine: if it has a short kneading program (e.g. for pasta), run it; if not, run the normal knead-and-proof program but be ready to stop and restart it after 15 min.
6. After the first 15 min, restart the pasta program (or the main one) and start adding the reserved flour one spoon at a time, waiting for each spoon to be absorbed before the next.
7. After another 15 min, restart the main knead-and-proof program (the author's is 1 h 15 min) and, while it runs, add the reserved fat one spoon at a time, again waiting for each to be absorbed.
8. Let the program finish — the dough should have doubled. Warm the room (~30°C).
9. Turn the dough onto an oiled surface and form ropes; braid as you like and place in an oiled 25 cm round tin. It rises a lot into a soft kozunak, so keep the braid loose with ~1 cm gaps.
10. Let it proof a second time in the oven at 45–50°C for between half an hour and 1.5 hours (depends on the sugar and yeast — more sugar proofs slower).
11. Move it to a warm room and heat the oven to 170°C (or 190°C without a fan).
12. Brush the kozunak with the reserved beaten egg white and a spoon of fresh milk. Optionally sprinkle with heat-stable sugar, or with damp hands sprinkle regular sugar.
13. Bake at 150°C fan (or 160°C without) for about 30 min.
14. When baked, open the oven but let it cool inside for a few minutes — don't pull it straight out into the cold.
15. Brush with a cold sugar syrup made from equal parts water and sugar.

Tips

• All ingredients at room temperature.
• Use fine flour (for banitsa/kozunak) sifted 3× to incorporate air.
• Rakia feeds the yeast — don't skip it.
• Too much sugar weighs the dough down; ideal is up to 250 g sugar per 1 kg flour. If not sweet enough, add liquid sweetener. Dissolve sugar in the milk, don't add it as crystals.
• Kozunak is best with 3 kinds of fat (here 90 g total). Add half at the start and the second half spoon by spoon after the dough comes together (~30 min in).
• No bread machine has a kozunak program, so you'll stop/restart the dough program 3 times, or run 2 pasta programs and proof in the (warm!) room, then shape warm and proof again.
• Put it into a warm oven and immediately lower the heat — kozunak bakes low and slow. For 1000 g flour: 190°C reduced to 160°C; for 550 g: 170°C reduced to 150°C.
• Bake with steam, or with a few bowls of water around the tin.
• Dough under 1 kg bakes ~30 min; 1 kg ~45 min; 1.5 kg ~1 h; 2 kg ~1.5 h.