Classic Easter sweet treats

Classic koulourakia from Smyrna

Among the astir fragrant and delicious koulourakia, these Easter cookies person a crumbly, buttery dough that melts successful your mouth. The cook uses sheep and goat beverage food for its wonderfully rustic, distinctive aroma, and adds a information of olive lipid (a beauteous improvement of tradition!) to marque them adjacent much tender and crisp. If you prefer, you tin substitute the sheep and goat beverage food with caller cow’s beverage food (the benignant wrapped successful paper), oregon use a blend of the two, oregon adjacent a Corfu-style butter. What you should decidedly not do, however, is regenerate the food with margarine – their spirit will beryllium noticeably inferior and flat.


Chef: Nena Ismyrnoglou


Prep: 50’


Cooking: 20’



Ingredients

(for astir 40 pieces)

• 500 g all-purpose flour, positive 100 g much if needed


• 150 g dairy food (the benignant sold successful a jar), astatine country temperature


• 150 ml olive oil


• 150 ml caller milk


• 150 g powdered sugar, mixed with


• 1 tbsp orangish zest oregon 1/2 tbsp bitter orangish zest


• 2 tsp vanilla extract


• 1 tsp baking powder


• 1/2 tsp salt


• 2 ovum yolks, for brushing
sesame seeds and nigella seeds, for sprinkling (optional)



Method


In a ample bowl, harvester the 500 g of flour with the brackish and baking powder. In another, larger bowl, adhd the butter, olive oil, milk, powdered sugar with the zest and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk oregon your hands until the substance is afloat combined. Gradually adhd the flour mixture, mixing continuously with your hands, until it comes together into a soft dough that doesn’t stick to your hands. If it feels too soft, gradually incorporated the different 100 g of flour, but beryllium careful, the dough should stay soft.


How bash you cognize it’s ready? Try shaping a cookie: the dough will tend to shrink back, so you’ll request to signifier it rapidly and confidently, without overworking oregon warming it, arsenic that will origin it to merchandise its oils. If the dough doesn’t clasp together, breaks easily, oregon is hard to handle, adhd a spot much flour and knead until incorporated.


Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Shape the dough into cookies successful immoderate signifier you similar – round, oval, braided, spiraled. The traditional signifier for Smyrna-style cookies, however, is the “little boat”: take small pieces of dough, rotation them into thin ropes, signifier each into a free “S” shape, then property the three strands together and flatten.
Arrange the cookies connected baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Lightly bushed the ovum yolks with 2 tablespoons of water and brushwood the cookies. You tin sprinkle them with sesame and nigella seeds for other flavor.

Bake for astir 20 minutes, oregon until golden.

Classic tsoureki bread

Giannis Vlassiou and Dimitris Dritsas, from Temps Perdu, are known not lone for their exceptional handmade puff pastries but besides for their outstanding sourdough tsoureki. They hole it utilizing an progressive earthy starter, but for convenience, they stock a version made with a simpler pre-ferment prepared the time before. The starter enhances the flavor, texture and support beingness of this sweet, fragrant bread, giving it much analyzable aromas and a amended crumb structure.

Chefs: Giannis Vlassiou & Dimitris Dritsas

Prep: 2 hours

Resting: 12 hours approx.

Baking: 20-25’

Ingredients

(makes 4 tsoureki loaves)

For the starter

• 250 g flour for tsoureki (strong breadstuff flour)

• 150 g water

• 1 g caller yeast (a very small amount, but it will work overnight successful the pastry, while much yeast will beryllium added later)

For the dough

Stage 1

• 500 g flour for tsoureki (strong breadstuff flour)

• 240 g sugar

• zest of 1 orange

• 10 g mahleb

• 2 g crushed mastic gum

• 7 g salt

• 2.5 g crushed cardamom

• 1 Madagascar vanilla bean

Stage 2

• 165 g eggs (about 3 mean eggs)

• 1 ovum yolk from a ample ovum oregon 2 from small eggs

• 75 g milk

• 1 tbsp olive oil

Stage 3

• 130 g cow’s beverage butter, astatine country temperature

• 30 g caller yeast

For the topping

• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• sliced almonds

Method

For the starter: Starting your mentation the nighttime before, harvester the water, flour and yeast successful a bowl. Mix well until the substance is smooth and afloat combined. Cover with integrative wrap and permission astatine country temperature overnight.

For the dough: Once the starter is acceptable to go, measurement retired and put each the ingredients according to the three stages.

In the vessel of a stand mixer (or a ample mixing bowl), adhd the Stage 1 ingredients on with the starter. Knead utilizing the dough hook oregon your hands until the sugar has afloat dissolved and a reasonably steadfast dough forms (about 4 minutes successful the mixer oregon 10 minutes by hand). If the dough feels too stiff and adust astatine this stage, adhd a small magnitude of the Stage 2 liquids; otherwise, adhd them successful the adjacent step.

In a 2nd bowl, premix the Stage 2 ingredients and adhd them gradually to the dough successful 3-4 doses, allowing each summation to beryllium afloat absorbed earlier adding the next. By the extremity of this process, the dough should beryllium soft and elastic. In the aforesaid way, adhd the food successful 3-4 doses, again waiting for each information to beryllium afloat incorporated earlier adding the next. With the last summation of butter, adhd the caller yeast arsenic well, simply crumbled, not dissolved successful liquid. It will rapidly incorporated during kneading arsenic it comes into interaction with the butter.

Once each the ingredients are afloat incorporated and the dough is smooth and elastic, transfer it to a clean, spacious bowl. Cover with integrative wrap and fto it remainder successful a warm spot for astir 30 minutes.

Remove the aerial from the dough by pressing it firmly with your fists, then fto it remainder again for different 30 minutes.

Transfer the dough to your work surface and disagreement it into 8 pieces of astir 200 g each. Shape each portion into a enactment astir 20 cm agelong and spot them connected the counter. Cover well with integrative wrap so they don’t travel into interaction with air, and fto them remainder for 25-30 minutes astatine country temperature.

Gently reshape the ropes, stretching them to astir 35 cm successful length, then braid them successful pairs to signifier 4 tsourekia. Transfer them to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
Cover loosely with integrative wrap oregon towels and fto them emergence successful a warm spot for astir 2.5-3 hours, until doubled successful volume.

Brush the tsoureki loaves with the ovum wash and sprinkle with sliced almonds. Bake successful a preheated oven astatine 150°C, utilizing the instrumentality setting, for 25-30 minutes, until they make a bully aureate color. Depending connected your oven’s temperature and intensity, they whitethorn request slightly little oregon much baking time.

Tips: Maintaining the due temperature during the fermentation stages – astir 26-28°C – is indispensable for the texture and aroma of the last product. Also, the effect improves importantly when the aromatics (mahleb, mastic, cardamom) are freshly ground.

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This story archetypal appeared successful Kathimerini’s nutrient supplement, Gastronomos.