Austrian Gugelhupf

This sweet yeast bread, very similar to the French brioche, is found in a broad belt of Europe, stretching from Alsace (where it is kugelhopf) to Vienna (where they say gugelhupf) and beyond. The word kugel is German for ‘ball’, and a Jewish round pudding was also called by that name. West or East, the shape is not so much a ball as an inverted decorated bowl with a hole down the middle