Braided Pistachio Loaf (Swedish Pistagelängd)

A super dish! One that, so far, has been overlooked in the reviews. Let me correct that. This braided pistachio loaf (Pistagelängd) is a winner. Make it and amaze your family, friends, guests, passersby and complete strangers.

It sounds a lot harder to make than it is. Thank you for giving most of the Rx in grams. I converted what few items which remained.

Since I have an Ankarsrum, I just put everything in the Ankarsrum bowl, turned in on for four minutes using the scraper and roller, then after it had stopped, I put in on med-high speed for ~12 minutes and walked away. I know my yeast is good, so I didn't bother with the hot milk or dropping the butter in a tablespoon at a time. I did add 8g of fresh ground cardamom instead of 5g, 'cause I like green cardamom and usually have it on had for Indian dishes and curries.

Beautiful, elastic, somewhat tacky dough. I marked out a 10x14" rectangle on the back of two sheets of parchment which fit my baking pans, moistened the counter top so the parchment would stick, floured the top surface of the parchment and easily rolled each half of the dough to fit the rectangle. Using a pizza cutter I cut short strips about every inch on about a 45° angle on the long edge of the rectangle. These quickly pulled back to thinner strips, so maybe next time, I will cut the strips every 1.5 to 2". In any case it laced, just fine.

I made the filling at ~1.5X the Rx amount for the nuts (pistachio (119g) and sliced almonds (75g)), used one stick of butter (110g), and one egg white (32g) and 227g of sugar.

I only had salt and black pepper spiced shelled pistachios on hand, so I rinsed most of the seasoning off using a strainer under running water. Worked fine. My almonds were slivered but with the skins on. I used them anyway. I heard no complaints, suggestions, or comments. The filling was very tasty.

I used 8g vanilla extract and 6g of almond extract, which I added by mistake as I meant to add only 3g instead of the 2g in the standard Rx. It was a bit too much in my opinion. Next time I will use no more than the 2g almond extract called for--and there will be a next time. I will make this again and again. I made extra filling as I find filled breads like this usually are better with more filling. YMMV.

My old, small, 1980's era oven is a fast oven, so I cut the temperature down to 375°F, and baked the two loaves on separate baking pans, one on the lower rack and one on the upper middle rack, turning 180° at the ten minute mark and exchanging the top and bottom pans. I extended the baking time by first three minutes, then covered each loaf with foil to slow browning as the internal temperature (thank you so much for that!) was only 174°F (possibly owing to the heavier amount of filling) and then by another four minutes. Total bake time was 27mins. At that time the internal temp (Thermoprobe Instant Read) was 205°F. So I pulled both pans. I am a bit over 1,000 ft above sea level and water boils ~210°F here, so 205° was close enough and I didn't want to get too much more browning.

I used the egg yolk+heavy cream as a wash and 30g each chopped pistachios, chopped sliced almonds, and pearl sugar as toppings.

My two loaves weighed at total of 1388g; there was a 6.8% water loss on baking. I wish I could add a photograph for they are very attractive.

Spectacular!

Got rave reviews when I took these to my dentist's office later. They all went gaga.

That's the good news. The bad news is that as made, the calorie count is pretty high for this treat at 4.2 cals/g. That is a 100g slice (3.5 oz) would be 420 cals. Or to put it into more conventional units for comparison similar to what one would find on a packaged food, a 28g (1 oz) piece would be 120 cals.