Greek Easter Bread -Tsoureki | Christine Cushing

[Music] hi I'm Christine Cushing and welcome to a very special offering from the quarantine kitchen today's a request for my Greek Easter bread I make it every year I want to share everything that I've learned with you today so let's go there's lots of fun in this recipe and I want to share with you why it's so important to keep up these amazing traditions so first thing I want to introduce you to the spices because these spices take this simple sweet bread to a whole other level so spice number one it's called ma leppe e yes hard to pronounce in the Arabic kitchen in the Middle Eastern kitchen it's also called ma club here it is as a whole spice this is essentially the seed of this beautiful cherry tree and it has such an amazing fragrance and in Greece we use it in cookies we use it in breads and this is what I did I ground it up in my mortar and pestle that's it ground the next spice that's essential is this beautiful little crystal I mean it's hardly a spice this is in fact a resin it's called mastiha-- and here it is ground again same way in my mortar and pestle this comes from a beautiful tree on the island of heals in Greece it's such an amazing story this but mas behind Greek just means gum so something that you chew it's like a gum and the this like these little drops that look like beautiful crystals are the resin that kind of forms droplets on the tree and it's hand harvested very very amazing it's also a drink it's very popular in Greece like if I choose this it'll actually turn into gum and my mouth it's amazing and it's a great breath freshener like it's got so many medicinal properties so my spices are ground up I also add an additional spice in a nice I love the flavor of anis it's a little bit kind of you know licorice II but soft on the sweet side so all these spices are gonna be mixed in with my wet ingredients all right those are my three big spices the next thing that I want to tell you about is the yeast again yeasted breads can be challenging so I've simplified this as much as it can be for you at home but there's still certain things that you need to know so what I'm using here is an instant yeast if you can get your hands on it really whatever yeast you can find because I know it can be hard to come by these days but the the advantage of instant yeast is it goes right in with the dry ingredients so my flour is already in my stand mixer I'm just gonna add the yeast to it just dry like this and mix it together in preparation for the rest of the ingredients so the full recipe is below the description of the video the difference between this so instant yeast versus dry active yeast they are different this instant East goes in with the dry ingredients active yeast has to be activated in water so you can certainly sub that if you want but you're gonna add a little bit more so this was a teaspoon if you're gonna use dry active yeast a teaspoon and a half full recipe below who's ready to make some Easter bread can I get my mortar and pestle out of the way now what are we making here essentially Greek Easter bread or Easter bread is a sweet bread and that means that it's gonna have some eggs it's a it's gonna have eggs and sugar and milk so it's got creamier consistency inside my spices are gonna go in three eggs there's the Molefi there is the musty huh and the anis ground going in you can certainly use fennel seed if you don't have a nice you don't have to add it but these two spices or these two greek ingredients that's what makes it a Greek Easter bread if you don't have those this will be just a nice sweet fragrant bread okay that's their sugar going in and this I'm just gonna mix by hand I've got some melted always unsweetened butter whenever you bake now why are unsalted did I say on sweet and unsalted butter the reason I always use unsalted butter for baking for cooking is because I want to control how much salt I'm gonna add and this way I know how much I'm adding I don't have somebody else adding the salt for me okay next thing again to heighten that flavor is some citrus zest orange mandarin Clementine if you have it but I feel that this really adds another layer to it and then this part is just gonna be mixed by hand already so beautiful okay I'm gonna add a little bit of warm milk to this just kind of warm to the touch but not hot and just stirring this baby all together by hand until just everything is blended for me this Greek Easter bread is a tradition that goes back since I was a teenager so the journey of this recipe is super super long and when I kind of embarked on the journey to make it because I really wanted to know how it was made the interesting thing for me is I wasn't yet in culinary school so I was a teenager I wasn't cooking professionally obviously but the women in my family were not bakers so we didn't have this recipe you know passed down from generation to generation so I kind of had to do some cheating ask a few people you know friends of family read some books and it was kind of hit and miss let's say mostly miss and less fit but I have to tell you I used to make this with my cousin I remember it like it was yesterday and it was like hold date like a weekend job so we would make it it would all be made by hand and then it took forever what seemed like so we would have sleeping bags in the living room you know as the bread rose and we would set timers but it was such an incredible memory for me that I still hold on to that so now I've really simplified and I've made this recipe so many times now and it really is synonymous with Easter and I wanted to sort of share it with you because traditions are so important to hold on to I think more so in difficult times like now because the tradition is bigger than we are then this moment is so that passing that on and keeping that tradition you it really makes you feel great so first step in making the dough the wet ingredients are gonna go in to meet the dry with my dough hook that's all going in you'll notice I haven't added the salt yet I like to separate the salt so I add it last because when salt comes in contact with yeast it can kill it so I like to take that precaution let me make sure I have all of that liquid right in there and we're starting this process is going to take this part maybe five minutes but it's about checking what's happening with your dough so timing is just again it's a variable that's so vast people want to know when is it done I'm gonna show you what you're looking for now last ingredient going in is the salt now that I've mixed these together you can use kosher salt you can use sea salt again I don't like using table salt because it is harsh so let's let that come together and I may want to use again the addition of my rubber scraper just to make sure we scrape down the sides you see how that can get stuck there and we just want to keep scraping around to bring all the moisture into the center to get ready for the next phase who's ready for some Greek Easter bread this recipe delivers I'm not gonna lie you will love it five minutes into the stand mixer work with the hook that very important step this is what we have still looks like soup but the gluten has started to develop you see how there's a little bit of stretch in it right but certainly I don't have enough structure so now it's a job for some hands so this bench flour is really important I'm just going to sprinkle the flour on my board that's why it's called bench flour use usually a bench this is not measured but this is where all of my years of trials and tribulations aren't going to help you because it literally took me I don't even know how many years to figure out when is it done like how much flour because you know Greek Mother's Greek grandmothers will usually if you try to get the recipe from them will say ah as much flour as it needs right as much as it needs that's what we're gonna go with alright so here going on to the floured surface and I want to make sure I use all of this it's a messy proposition but man is it fulfilling once you make one of these honestly it's like climbing Mount Everest you really feel such a sense of magic has happened okay now you can take it a little bit further in your stand mixer add a bit more flour but the key is not to add too much flour at the beginning because it seems like it's wet and messy but then it starts to come together so you want to do it gradually that's what I had to learn the hard way but you're learning the easy way you want to make sure I get all of this out and this is the quintessential enriched dough you've got some sort of fat some sort of eggs and some milk usually and that's gonna make it rich and silky and a bit of a denser crumb all right who's ready to work the biceps all right I start with my scraper one of these plastic little scrapers is awesome keeps your hands clean at the beginning and I keep adding a little bit of flour until I can get it to a stage where it's gonna start holding together okay the feeling of this is magical and now that all those ingredients have come together the aroma of this dough is beautiful I want to make sure I pick up all of this just anything on my scraper I'll take it off and then my bench flour is close by and now it's a little bit of muscle but not I'm not going too crazy with this it's just having one hand clean like this and I like to work with one hand and then flip with the other that's my technique and it's still gonna feel a little bit sticky right so at the beginning you can use your scraper just like that and this process might take about seven eight nine minutes again depending on so many factors so let's talk about the flour for these times I wanted to simplify this and the request was for all-purpose flour normally what I do is I blend all-purpose and I add some bread flour what the bread flour does is it gives you more protein so it's gonna make it rise more and it's going to be a bit drier because I'm using only all-purpose it will take a little bit more flour so have a look at this and see when I'm kneading this this is about five minutes in see how it's coming off from the board but it is still pretty sticky they're right so I'm safe to come in with a little bit more flour but a bit at a time because it does get dry very very quickly okay and this is not super aggressive but the scraper helps enormous Lee I can't even tell you how critical that scraper is again and just like a couple more minutes here until it's a bit tacky but not super sticky the big question is when is it needed enough and ready to be proofed or risen and this is what I had a tough time as a kid figuring it out that's perfection so have a look at this it's still a little bit tacky so if you actually feel it with your hands it's a slight bit sticky but it's just still smooth you see how it sort of sits my finger just leaves it kind of a sticky print like that that's perfect that's what I'm looking for so it's still pretty loose and the key is if it's feeling sticky let it sit for maybe three or four minutes and come back to it it will relax a bit now that oh it's so good I don't want to go with too much flour it's better to be a slight bit more loose that's perfection look at that it's now going into a buttered bowl covered in a you know slightly warm place I don't like doing this in the fridge although you can do it in the fridge overnight if you want like if you want to slow it down I'm gonna cover that and a couple hours later this is what it looks like are you ready can you stand it this is what my cousin and I'd camped out all night for to make look at that doubled in bulk looks amazing and you notice that I'm tiptoeing I haven't punched it or done anything crazy like that I don't want to let the air out it's just gently gonna happen are you ready for this here comes your way oh there is oh that isn't a thing of beauty I don't know what is now I'm being very delicate with it here and what I want to do is create three braids and I'm just going to turn it into a slight rectangle to help me out I have a pretty specific way of shaping it here feels perfection the aroma if you could just smell this you would lose it and look at these bubbles so what I want to do by making that rectangle it's gonna be easier for me to create three strips and then each of those strips into three so I need a little pythagoras a little Greek math it kind of helps than I am Greek so here that's my kind of rough rectangle and I use my pastry scraper it's easy because the dough is a little bit sticky so I'm gonna mark the thirds just as my little kind of guide here again it doesn't have to be right on the money but that's gonna be helpful and then each of those is going to be then three so we get three beautiful braids texture this is so good and you notice I haven't floured my surface I only do that in extreme situations otherwise it's going to dry out looking good so we work at one at a time like that in two three just sort of market it's perfect then what I do here is just I do a gentle tap as opposed to rolling these out I just tap them a little bit gently like that and that's how we're gonna make the perfect braid beautiful okay so braid number one gently but quickly just tuck the end in like that and this here to fasten it and this will be a simple braid and I'm resisting adding any flour but if it's sticking I'll add just a touch and then I just tap them gently to even them out and then go in with the simple braid over over I'm being gentle but fast I don't want to dilly-dally around here like that I took the last part in like that to fasten it and there is my braid that's gonna go right over here and that is the last one oh all right an hour these have got to prove four I'm gonna cover them up and we'll see what they look like pretty soon okay one hour of proofing time that is the last rise before they go into the oven look how great they look so I just have a little egg wash so egg mixed with water for the top that's gonna give him that glossy Sheen and at this point when my cousin Debbie and I were making these as kids when this timer went off for the final proof to go in the oven we knew we were very close to our destination oh that Sheen is what I'm talking about my oven is preset now at about 325 on a convection scent setting traditionally we would have red eggs in here I don't have them this year so I'm not putting them in but you would die the egg and put it right inside and bake it with it that's the symbol for Easter okay these are ready to go sometimes people sprinkle the mousse SME I don't ever do that but you can certainly go ahead and do it probably 30 minutes going in 325 convection oh look at these babies okay they're definitely not done yet but look at that color so because of this enriched dough I went for low temperature otherwise they burn too quickly six seven more minutes 33 minutes exactly they are done look at the color oh that's all I'm gonna say really look at that deep dark color that's why I cook them at that low temperature now for me I like to take these off I'm gonna cool them a couple of seconds and then I'm going to cool them on this rack then I get to taste okay look at the beautiful color on that so here's what I'm looking for a dark color all the way up bottom hollow-sounding perfectly cooked enough waiting it's all about the slicing inside this is what we're here for that's what we're talking about look at that beautiful texture this will soften as it cools completely but look at that this is where I'm going with that see that soft beautiful wonderful crumb texture inside oh I don't think this is gonna make it through maybe a couple of days okay if we highly highly restrain ourselves maybe three which we must but look at this this is what I'm talking about the fragrance the texture is insane I don't know this might be my best most favorite thing ever incredible every Easter I must make this bread I have missed it maybe twice in my life when I was traveling when I was at school that's what traditions mean to me and I think it's so important for us to uphold them that's why I wanted to share this super super special recipe that I've worked practically my whole life coming up with thank you again for spending some time with me in the quarantine kitchen to share this beautiful bread hope you're well please keep in touch thumbs up share let me know what's happening in your kitchen see you next time

Channel: MyFavouriteFoods ChristineCushing

Views: 58,474

Rating: 4.8771033 out of 5

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Id: RlQkJZ0aPfI

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020