This year I cracked a recipe that had eluded me for a while: tsoureki, a Greek (and Turkish, Balkan…let’s not forget Turkey is the stepmother of modern Greece and other Balkan countries) festive, spicy, semi-sweet bread of sorts which looks a lot like Zopf. I’d get the right taste but not the texture, it’d always come out too bready and not stringy/fibrous (the texture and sweetness should be between Zopf and Panettone). The bright idea I had was to incorporate the butter in stages: first spreading the dough, adding some chunks of butter, folding it, spreading again and repeating the process 2-3 more times like one would do for puff pastry. I feel this is what gave it the layering needed. Here’s the recipe:
Mix 1 - mix and leave for 20 mins while measuring/prepping the rest
- 80g of the hardest flour - I used Zopf flour and was very successful
- 9g dry yeast or 20g fresh
- 100g milk
Mix 2 - prep like a roux (stirring over heat until a slurry is made) and let cool
- 40g flour (the same for the whole recipe)
- 160g milk
Mix 3
- 420g flour
- 100-150g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 0.5 tsp cardamom
- 10g mahlab (cherry pit powder, all Arabic and Turkish shops will have it, it’s lovely)
- 0.5 tsp masticha - it’s resin from specific trees grown in Greece, I didn’t readily find this anywhere in BS/BL but came out great anyway
- pinch of salt
- 0.5 tsp vanillin
- zest from one orange
- 100g cold butter in chunks
Mix everything but the butter for 8 mins with a hook extension if you have it, by hand if you don’t. Normal mixers will die as the dough is super firm.
Add butter as described above or gradually in a machine, mix another 8 min. Leave to rise for an hour, flatten, cut in half (recipe makes either two medium sized tsourekia or one big one), divide each half in four pieces, make 4 long strings, braid, leave to rise again, brush with egg yolk +/- dust with sugar, bake at 160 with fan on for 30mins, brush with melted butter while it’s still hot from the oven, LEAVE for a day before eating (trust me).