Christmas Ham Bread / Christmas Recipe

Hello dear members. Each country has its traditions when it comes to celebrating the Christmas holidays, but gastronomy plays a very important role in all of them. Today I am going to share with you a recipe for one of the most famous Christmas meals in my country Venezuela.

Ingredients:
Ham bread dough: 500 g. all-purpose or common wheat flour
35 g. powdered milk
250 ml. of warm water
6 g. of dry yeast of baker or 18 g. baker's pressed yeast
1 egg M
5 g. of salt
25 g. of sugar
50 g. butter (creamy texture)
A little oil to grease
For the filling: 400 g. smoked ham
10-12 strips of bacon or smoked bacon
40 g. pitted raisins
100 g. of olives stuffed with pepper
Before baking: 1 egg to brush.

Venezuelan ham bread preparation:
To prepare the dough, mix the flour with the yeast, the powdered milk, the sugar, the salt, the warm water and the beaten egg in a large bowl. We knead with our hands, we will have a sticky dough but little by little it will become more consistent.

Kneading and stuffing the ham bread:

• This time we dump the dough on a clean and floured surface. Divided the dough in two. We knead one half with a rolling pin, reserve the other half. We shape it into a rectangle, we can help each other with our hands.
• We place the olives aligned on one side, so they will all stay in the same place. This step is purely decorative, we can spread the olives throughout the dough if we prefer.
  In the center of the dough we spread the raisins, we put the smoked ham on top

Baking and final presentation of the ham bread:

• Cover again with a cloth and let it rest for another 40 minutes.
  We preheat the oven to 200º C with heat up and down. We put the breads on a tray on parchment paper.
• We lower the temperature to 180º C and bake for 18-20 minutes. Take out of the oven, brush with the beaten egg and bake another 20 minutes at 175º C, until we check that the bread is golden on the outside.
  All of these photographs were taken with my Realme C11 cellphone