Christos Anesti! (it's all Greek to us)

Happy Easter to all of our friends who celebrate this day, and to those to don’t, happy spring Sunday to you!!

Before we get you started with today’s recipe (and p.s. it really is a good full day’s worth of work) we’re going to answer the question that is obviously been burning through your minds for the past month.

Last month we didn’t tell your our theme. We thought it would be fun, and it was (at least for us). After many, many… many guesses we finally got the correct answer from not one, but two lucky TCC fans, Emily and Juilet (and ps, you ladies will be receiving your prizes soon).

So, the mystery? National food holidays!!
We won’t make you guess this month’s theme, because we’re afraid we might lose some readers if we do. We’ve decided to dedicate this month to eggs! And to start the month, we are giving you a Greek Easter Bread recipe.

While doing research to find a traditional recipe, we became completely overwhelmed with the number of variations there are. In keeping with that theme, we threw everything we liked from the other recipes into ours.

Although this bread is titled Easter bread, we won’t tell if you make it on another day.

Greek Easter Bread (Tsoureki):

1 ½ Tbsp active dry yeast (two packets)
¼ c warm water
2 Tbsp. plus 3 ½ to 4 c sifted all-purpose flour
1 tsp honey
1 c sugar
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
2/3 c milk, scalded and cooled
2 tsp. ground anise seed
14 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp orange extract
Oil for greasing bowl and pan
Sesame seeds for topping
1 egg, beaten for topping
4 red-dyed hard-boiled eggs for decoration

Mix yeast with water. Add 2 Tbsp flour and honey. Stir, then let stand in a warm place until mixture bubbles and foams, about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl beat the 4 eggs. Add sugar, cooled milk, anise seed, melted butter and salt. Stir in yeast mixture, and extracts. Add 3 ½ cups of flour to egg mixture to make a stiff and elastic dough (add more flour as necessary to get your dough stiff and elastic). Dough will be very sticky. Knead well on a floured board for about 5 minutes. Or use dough hook of an electric mixer.

Place dough in a greased bowl; cover with plastic wrap and a damp towel. Let rise until almost double in bulk, about 3 hours.

Punch down and turn over in bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and a damp towel and let rise again until almost double in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously flour work area before rolling out dough. Separate dough into 6 balls. Roll each ball into 7-inch-long ropes. Braid 3 of the ropes for one loaf, and 3 for the second. Place loaves on a greased cookie sheet and let rise about 45 minutes until double in bulk.

Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Arrange 1 red egg at each end of both loaves. Bake 30 to 40 minutes until golden.

Notes:


We found that it took more flour than called for in the recipe, so don’t get nervous if you find that you have to keep adding beyond the 4 cups.


To dye the eggs, you can use the normal dying method, or go to this website, which tells you how to die with yellow onion skins (this is what we did).

We tweaked the recipe from The NY Times, if you want to see their recipe, go to this link.