Portuguese Sweetbread

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Portuguese Sweetbread

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Growing up my mom would make Sweetbread aka Massa for every special celebration, and especially for Easter and Christmas.
Truly these holidays would not be complete unless there was sweetbread to enjoy. I can recall especially, Easter where it felt like my mom would make enough loaves to feed our whole family, our extended family as well as all our friends!! I also remember the wonderful aroma of the baked bread… it would fill not only the house, but also that the whole Portuguese neighborhood that I lived in…. It smelled Amazing!!!
After my mom passed, I tried and tried several times to recreate the same as what my mom had baked. I failed Several Times!
I can honestly say that making sweetbread was the hardest for me to learn.  I couldn’t understand why I could bake bread but had such a difficult time with sweetbread. It wasn’t until my aunt Lilia explained that sweetbread dough is supposed to be wetter than the usual bread dough that she hit it on the nail: I had been adding more flour because I thought the dough was too wet.
That would explain why my loaves were heavy and not as light!
But that’s how we learn, and most importantly, we don’t give up!!
If you have my cookbook, you know there are two recipes in it for sweetbread… One from my mom and one from my aunt Lilia.
This recipe was given to me after the cookbook was published and it is also wonderful. It comes from my dear friend Ann’s family.
I hope that you get to make it soon, and don’t be afraid to try it.

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  • Author: Maria Lawton
  • Prep Time: 8-12 hours
  • Cook Time: 40 min
  • Total Time: 13 minute
  • Yield: 6–8 loaves 1x
  • Category: Baked Goods

Ingredients

Scale

1/2 cup of shortening (or lard)

3 packages of dry active yeast (1/4 oz envelopes)

1/2 cup of lukewarm water

2 cups of whole milk

2 cups of granulated sugar

1/2 cup of butter

3/4 tsp salt

10 cups of all-purpose flour

8 eggs * at room temperature

Egg Wash

1 egg

1 tablespoon of water

Instructions

1 In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in water and let rise to double in size.
2 In a extra-larger bowl, add flour and salt and mix ingredients together.
3. In saucepan, melt butter and shortening in milk and cool to lukewarm.
4. In a medium bowl, beat eggs and sugar together.
5. Create a well in the large bowl of salt &flour, add the eggs and sugar, melted butter and milk and last add the yeast. Mix all ingredients together and knead until dough is nice and smooth (at least 20 min). Dough tends to be on the wet side so resist the urge to add much more flour. Let rise until double in size, usually six to eight hours.(more if cold weather)
6. Punch down, deflating the dough. Form individual breads and put in buttered and floured pans ( any shape or size will do).

The dough should fill only half the pan. Let rise again until dough doubles in size, filling the pan.

7. Brush top of dough with egg wash (beaten egg and water).

8. Bake at 325 degrees-preheated oven for 40 to 60 minutes (adjust longer cook time for larger loaves).*Please note if your oven runs hotter, please make sure to lower the temp to 300F . Using a large skewer insert in center to double check …if it’d dry…it’s done. The bread should be golden color. Please don’t over bake, or else the dough will be on the dry side. If top is browning and the center is still unbaked…cover the top with foil and place bake in oven..

 

Notes

 

I have many of my mother’s sweetbread pans, but if you find that you don’t have any here’s one from Portugalia Marketplace that you may like.  You can see a larger image of it in my store, as well as a link to Portugalia to purchase it.

Baking this bread is a little tricky since it’s a very sensitive dough, but here are few things that I learned along the way.

*This dough has two risings… one together in one extra large bowl and then again in its baking pan
*Your kitchen needs to be warm, if not, the dough will take forever to rise.
*Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and place it in a draft-free area. I even cover it with several kitchen towels, and my aunt recommends using an electric blanket to add warmth, too… ps I haven’t tried that trick yet!!!
*The dough has to work very hard to rise using the 10 cups of flour…so if you want to test out a recipe, cut the recipe in half, which should cut down the rising time too.
*When moving the dough from the first rise into the baking pans, grease your hands with oil so that the dough doesn’t stick so much to your hands.
 
*A friend of mine suggested that I start the dough just before I went to bed so that the next morning it was ready to go into the greased pans and rise again. Since that suggestion… I have always done this, and let me tell you, that was the best advice anyone has given me.
 
Another note… for an even quicker baking time, use angel food cake pans. You don’t have a center to worry about, and it’s easier to slice too!

Did you make this recipe?

Share a photo and tag us @azoreangreenbean — we can’t wait to see what you’ve made!

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8 thoughts on “Portuguese Sweetbread”

  1. Leslie Secton

    I can’t wait to try your recipe for Sweet bread. We were stationed in the Azores at Lajes for two years, 86-88. We loved the Azores and the wonderful people we met there. I make a sweet bread every year from a recipe compiled in a small paper book (along with others) that I bought at the Stars and Stripes book store on base. Just found your show too. Brings back the most wonderful memories.

    ★★★★★

    Reply
  2. Vanessa

    It took me a few tries but I finally perfected this recipe! However, a few months later I had to start a strict gluten free diet for health reasons. Do you know if this will work the same if I use 1:1 GF flour?

    ★★★★★

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  3. Margo

    Thank you – this brings back great childhood memories of seeing my grandmother and mother making Massa for special occasions. Remembering waiting for the first batch to come out of the oven. Great with tea with lots of milk or glass of milk! Lol

    Reply
  4. Lisa Carvalho

    Hi Maria! Thank you so much for sharing the recipe! I was gifted your Azorean Cooking book as a gift from my mother. Both my mom and dad are from the Azores and I have vivid memories of my Avó and mom making massa. I always wanted to make it myself, which took me years to do. After receiving your book I decided to make your Tia Lilia’s recipe. My husband, Portuguese neighbor and I loved it!! I’m going to make a batch for a local artisan market and found this one. However, I noticed it’s a bit different from your moms recipe in the book. How many loaves does this one make? The recipe listed in the book states it yields 5 to 6, 9 inch loaves. Thank you so much for your time and help! Obrigado!!

    Reply
    1. Maria Lawton

      Hi Lisa,
      So sorry to have missed your message for whatever reason your message went into spam.
      I hope that you and your family had a wonderful Easter and so happy to hear that you’re enjoying my Tia Lilia‘s sweet bread recipe her recipe makes a smaller batch than my moms but as with anything you can double up my Tia Lilia‘s recipe and it’ll give you more sweet bread… also the reason I say 5 to 6 it depends on the size of the baking pan you’re using obviously if you’re using bigger pans you’re going to make less loaves smaller pans more loaves.
      I hope that helps
      Best
      Maria

      Reply
  5. Jennifer Matthews-Souza

    Just seeing these recipes almost made me cry missing the family days with my mixed Portuguese/Sicilian family that I didn’t get much time with. My Portuguese side is orig from Azores . I plan to come visit soon. Thank you for your channel.

    Reply

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