You know those little cooking videos that pop up on FB occasionally, or in my case, constantly? Apparently, FB knows what you like and what you want to see. Think Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four.”

Tasty posted a video describing how to make a bread basket for Easter. If you know me, you know I never make anything without making a practice recipe before delivering the final product. This one is heading to Dan, Frances, Kathy, Grace and Vivian for their Easter Dinner on Sunday afternoon. (We would have been there but are still “sheltering at home.”) The final basket will be filled with dinner rolls, and maybe some berry popovers. (I haven’t made a practice recipe of those yet… maybe tomorrow?) I also asked for a few colored eggs to be added and photographed, so look for an update next week.

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I made few changes to the method but not the ingredients. Here are some tips to the method:

• After the strips are cut, you can stretch them to fit around the bowl. The two braided strips can also be stretched to fit.
• Put a little water on the ends of the dough strips as adhesive to join them together.
• You will not end up with a perfect rectangle when rolled out. Cut equal width strips. Use the shorter dough strips (from the ends of your “rectangle” to circle the smaller bottom of the basket (which is the top of the upside-down bowl.)
• Use toothpicks to hold the dough strips in place, especially the latitudinal ones. They fall down the sides of the oiled bowl.
• The longitudinal strips need to be flattened, or offset to keep them from being too high and not having a flat surface to stabilize the finished basket. I cut the peak off to make a nearly level bottom.
• After removing the basket from the bowl and removing the aluminum foil I returned the basket to the oven, right side up, for about 10 min to completely cook the inside of the basket where it was in contact with the bowl. I also wrapped the edge of the basket that was fully baked to prevent it from further darkening.

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Bread Basket – Tasty.co

INGREDIENTS
• 1 ½ cups (350g) water
• 1 Tbl 1 tsp (12g) brown sugar
• 14 g yeast
• 4 ¼ cups (531g) AP flour
• 2 Tbl Canola oil
• 1 Tbl salt

METHOD

1. Mix water, yeast and brown sugar. Let it sit five minutes
2. Add flour, canola oil, salt mix. Knead
3. Form into a ball then place in a greased bowl
4. Cover and let rise 30 minutes in a warm place
5. Roll to a 15 x 18“ rectangle when relaxed
6. Cut into 15 strips across the 18 inch direction.
7. Cover outside of the bowl with aluminum foil and spray with oil
8. Place four strips across the top of the bowl
9. Lift up every other strip wrap one strip around the circumference
10. Lift up alternate pieces and place another strip around lift up the first pieces place another strip around – use toothpicks to hold in place
11. Lay a total of 5 strips (or as many as required to fill the side of the “bowl.” (I used 7.) It depends on the width of the strips and size of the bowl.
12. Cut ends of the longitudinal strips to fit
13. Braid 3 pieces, cut the ends off to squared the ends of the braid.
14. Stretch and fit around the bottom of the bowl
15. Braid 3 more strips, place over a bowl to form the handle and cut the ends to square them up.
16. Coat the handle with egg wash and flaky sea salt
17. Bake 350 for 30 to 35 minutes
18. Attach the handle to the basket with toothpicks