Τσουρέκι time

I made my first τσουρέκι (tsoureki) a year ago. My correspondent in Athens had sent me a marvellous parcel of goodies which included packets of μαχλέπι (mahlepi) and μαστίχα (mastic) and a copy of a recipe for tsoureki. Mahlep is a spice made from the ground kernels of cherry stones and is like nothing else I've ever used. Mastic is a piney resin with a very distinctive taste. Both are used as flavourings in Greek cuisine and both are traditionally used in making tsoureki. It took me a little while to get around to making my tsoureki as I had to translate the recipe first and it had been a while since I'd tackled any Greek - in addition, most mysteriously, the already-tiny text in my pocket Greek dictionary had shrunk to almost unreadable proportions. Tsoureki is a plaited brioche-like bread that is traditionally made at Easter, and we liked it very much indeed.

As it's Easter again, it must be τσουρέκι time, so I pulled out the mahlepi and rolled my sleeves up. This time I chose to follow Vefa Alexiadou's recipe in my enormous cookery book, and this included chocolate, orange peel and almonds inside along with the almonds on top that I'd gone with last time.

I made up the dough with mahlep and orange peel, then after its bulk fermentation, rolled it out and cut it into three strips. These I filled with plain chocolate drops and slivered almonds, then rolled them up ready for their hairdo. I made two three-strand plaits and left them to prove in a warm place. When they were ready, I eggwashed them and sprinkled with more slivered almonds. After cooking, the loaves were very dark, darker than I'd normally like, but many of the images and illustrations of this bread shows a very dark finish.

They were delicious, the orange peel coming through nicely with the mahlepi, and the fillings adding pockets of extra yumminess. Overall, I found the bread on the dry side, which was a nice excuse for spreading it with butter. Next time I think I'd add a spot more butter into the dough.

Going Dutch

I have a fan oven. It's quite enthusiastic. It huffs and it puffs and it makes your bread brown. Dark brown, you know, the dark brown with lots of carbon in it. Even adjusted for fan-ness, at the right bread-making temperature my loaves were all turning out darker than I wanted. I was also finding that my loaves lacked in the oven spring department because introducing baking stones (well, granite chopping boards) had necessitated a rearrangement of oven shelves which meant that there was no room for a steam tray, and the quick-grab-the-spray-and squirt-through-teeny-gap-in-the-door-without-letting-too-much-heat-out approach never seemed to work brilliantly.

One option would be to buy a reconditioned rack oven and convert the garage into my own dream bakery. But, back on planet Earth, I looked for a slightly easier solution. I read about Dutch ovens - a cast iron casserole with a tight-fitting lid would create the steamy atmos I wanted, while at the same time ensuring an even heat distribution and protecting it from burning. I looked online for likely candidates, while Tallboy carefully measured inside the oven. I flirted for a while with this large specimen from Lakeland, but finally lit on this fine example from Ikea, and its friend.

I've been using them for a couple of months and I'm really pleased with the results. I put them into the oven before I turn it on, so that they heat up gradually. I decant the proved loaves from the banneton straight onto a piece of silicone liner, then drop this gently into the hot casserole, slamming the lid on quickly to keep in the heat and steam. I bake at my normal bread temperature (230° C, or rather 210° C in my oven) and leave the lids on for 20 or 25 minutes, then complete the bake topless, leaving the lids on the hob. This gives a lovely rise during the first session, and much better browning during the second. During my initial recuperation from the car accident when I couldn't lift, Tallboy and I got quite good at the ballet sequences involved in my opening the oven door and his removing/replacing the casseroles, but since his motorbike accident coincided with the return of my ability to lift things it's a solo effort nowadays.

Some observations about using a Dutch oven for baking bread:

• Maximum of two loaves at a time - I could do four direct on the baking stones.


• I made sure that the handles on the lids were cast iron too, rather than plastic which might not have been so happy at high bread-baking temperatures


• They get hot. I mean really hot. Seriously hot. So hot that I have hurt myself simply by touching the outside of the oven gloves I used to get them out of the oven.


• I haven't yet gone to pick up a discarded lid with bare hands to tidy it away while still searingly hot. But I fear that one day I will.


• They don't do so well if the loaf is small - it needs to take up a decent volume inside the casserole or it will pancake.


• I have found that the round one works best with my 500g round bannetons, and the oval one with my 1kg oval banneton.


• You can use baking parchment to decant the proved loaves onto but it chars after a few times in the oven.


• Having cast iron casseroles in your batterie de cuisine makes you feel strangely grown up.


• They have helped me produce loaves of which I'm really, really proud.


• Baked on flour residue makes for an attractive spotty finish on the lids. Or so I tell myself.


• The oval one is bigger than the round one. It won't fit on the bottom of the oven, no matter how many times you try.

Here are some pictures from some of today's batch (50% stoneground spelt, 50% strong white)

Silicone liner for decanting proved loaves


The big oval casserole


After twenty minutes - beautifully risen but pale as you like


After another fifteen or so minutes, now with crust


The smaller round casserole


After twenty minutes


At the end of the bake


Round loaf sitting up and looking pretty


Both loaves

Beware of Greek bread that doesn't lift

I am determined not to be beaten by this eftazimo. I will make some that turns out all right. I might be 90 by the time I manage it, but I will.

I decided to try Vefa's recipe again, but this time to go for a much looser dough. I achieved that, at least. Much, much looser...

This time I was excited to use my new, specially-purchased-for-pounding-chick-peas pestle and mortar. It's huge and solid and spectacularly therapeutic when it comes to crushing the innocent. It's an absolute monster, weighs half of what Junior did when he was born, and was going to be much more fun than the coffee grinder. With not much effort, the chick peas crumbled at my knees. Well, they split in half and discarded their skins. On the downside, I had to be very precise when attacking them, and give each one its own doink - It's pretty impressive how far a mis-hit chick pea can ricochet round the kitchen. On an entirely unrelated note, stepping on a partial chick pea in stocking feet is not an experience one wishes to try more than once. Or even once, really.

I was left with mostly-in-half chick peas, which I decided was probably ok. I put them in my kilner jar with some salt and boiling water, wrapped it in a towel and left it in the cosy airing cupboard for 25 hours, having alerted the boys that it was meant to be there and didn't need rescuing. After its sojourn in the airing cupboard, the jar showed evidence of extreme activity although the froth that was left wasn't much to write home about. It had clearly risen very high up the jar in a desperate attempt to escape its fate, so I am sorry I didn't peek earlier and rescue it then.

I decanted the froth and the juice and mixed it with a tablespoon of sugar and some of Shipton Mill's finest. Something made me put it in a bigger bowl than last time. A plastic hat, then back in the airing cupboard with it. I did peek this time, just before bed, and saw to my horror (ok, deep joy) that the stuff was almost fermenting its way out of the bowl. I scooted downstairs and decanted it into a bigger one to make sure it couldn't escape. In the morning, it didn't look much different, it hadn't grown any and if anything had fewer bubbles. I think I missed the bus on this one again.

The next morning I wasn't ready to use it, so I gave it a spot of breakfast to keep it going and then made up the dough later on that afternoon. I was more liberal with the water this time and in complete opposition to the tight little mass I made last time, I had the sloppiest slappiest dough which I worked the Bertinet way because there wasn't anything else I could do with it.

I left it to prove in a couple of round bannetons in front of the radiator. I watched it like a hawk but couldn't see any movement apart from when one blew a huge bubble at me in a sticking-out-its-tongue fashion. I decided to bake one on a granite slab in the oven, and one in my smaller dutch oven. Neither of these turned out to be a particularly good idea. The one on the stone spread and spread and didn't look like it would ever stop. 'Pancake' is what came to mind as I peered forlornly through the oven window. The one in the dutch oven didn't fare much better.

Again it has been popular with the boys, so it's not a dead loss. It's just galling that getting the chick peas fermenting seems from the write-ups to be the difficult bit, and that is happening for me. It's what I do afterwards that is drenched in fail.

Next time I am going to be guided by Paula Wolfert so you never know, I might have something neat to show you then...

Behold the power of my granite monster


I'm not sure this adds a great deal, I just quite liked the photo


It didn't seem to smell as weird this time. Maybe I'm getting used to it.


Conclusive evidence of an attempted escape


This wouldn't look any different in 3D


The one on the right looks like a cross between a drop scone and a dodgem car


A valiant attempt at bubble formation

It's all Greek to me

It isn't easy to bake when you've taken a Porsche to the right knee. Prolonged standing is a no-no for a start. And with limited mobility, fitness just seems to evaporate, so all of a sudden kneading a batch of dough is exhausting. It's been frustrating having my capabilities limited but huzzah for healing and being able to stand up and so on. To celebrate being able to do more, I tried something new.

During my enforced sitting-on-my-arse-on-the-sofa-for-several-weeks period, I got a bit trigger happy with the 'add to basket' button and took delivery of a bunch of books, mostly to do with cooking. The most substantial tome is one simply called 'Vefa's Kitchen' by Vefa Alexiadou ('the Greek Delia' according to my source in Athens) and not only does it require a minimum of two hands for lifting, it is unique amongst my cookery books as it is furnished with a full three place-marking ribbons.

Vefa's book does contain a substantial number of chapters devoted to cooking deceased creatures, but is far from being a dead loss as there is plenty to excite a veggie too. The first place I turned to was the bread section, where I was interested by a recipe which required a hit-and-miss process of leaven creation using chick peas.

The deal is that you mess around with some ground up dried chick peas, introduce them to some boiling water in a jar, wrap it in a blanket and leave it somewhere warm for a day or two then see what happens. You're not to mention to anyone that you're doing it else they might put the evil eye on proceedings and scupper your efforts. I had to tell the boys, though. They don't normally go into the airing cupboard as a rule, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if I hadn't said 'That fermenting jar wrapped in a blanket in the airing cupboard, you see, that one there, touch it and feel my fury' they would have been investigating and probing and rescuing it for me.

The bread is called εφτάζυμο (eftazimo) and this caused me a bit of head-scratching because according to some sources that means '7 times kneaded' and according to others it's a corruption of 'self-leavening'. I prefer the latter...

The first difficulty I had (if you don't count the fruitless search for the box containing my Kilner jars which I'd put away as I never use them) was how to coarsely grind half a lb of dried chick peas. They are hard as little bullets and would have taken chunks out of my food processor blade. They'd probably have demolished my feeble little pestle and mortar too, had I been crazy enough to use that. My only course seemed to be my little coffee grinder which has never seen a coffee bean in its life but which makes short work of linseeds and so on. I divvied up the chick peas into little batches and started to zap the first lot. I don't know if you've ever tried to coarsely grind dried chick peas in a coffee grinder, but if you have, you'll know what I quickly discovered - that instead of an even grind, I managed to produce an astonishing array of items on the continuum

whole unscathed chick peas --------------------- finely powdered chick peas

calling at every station in between. Not being entirely sure what a coarsely ground chick pea looks like, I decided to pretend that this was a desired outcome on the basis that they were all probably coarsely ground on average.

I sterilised my newly-purchased Kilner jar by sloshing boiling water at it, then added my averagely coarsely ground victims, a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and three cups of boiling water. A quick stir with my longest spoon and a momentary oh-lord-my-hand-is-stuck then it was on with the swaddling and tucking it away in the airing cupboard. The coldest weekend for a long time might seem to be a strange time to be undertaking something which needs to sit for a day or two in a very warm place, but we have had the heating on quite a lot...

I peeked after twenty four hours and it seemed to correspond with the description of a deep layer of foam on top. The dreaded 'if there's no foam and it all looks a bit orange just tip it away' scenario hadn't hit. Perhaps the silver coating on the inside of the airing cupboard door has anti-evil eye properties? I brought it downstairs to spoon off the froth but realised as I dunked the spoon that the froth contained a goodly proportion of tiny bits of overground chick pea. Ah. As I pierced the top layer, the fermenting pulses fired a plume of spume, good white bubbles with no bits of chick pea in it. Er, maybe this was how it was supposed to be? I spooned out all the froth, both white and full of chick peas. The steeping juice was also required, so I sieved this into my bowl too, then realised this was a more appropriate technology for the froth so after a bit of juggling back and forwards, I ended up with a froth/juice mixture with a negligible chick pea content.

A cup of strong white flour and a tablespoon of sugar turned it into a slack paste and phase two was go. A plastic bag hat then overnight in the airing cupboard as it bubbled away happily to itself.

In the morning I rescued it and peered worriedly at it, wondering if it was ok. The smell wasn't unpleasant, but was pretty strange and not at all like the sourdough starters I'm used to. A house guest who arrived just after I retrieved it enquired with a wrinkled nose what the hell was that smell.

I went ahead and followed the rest of the recipe, adding the starter to more strong flour, sugar, olive oil, a little salt and three quarters of a cup of water. The resulting dough was very tight, but not knowing how it was supposed to be, and following my usual procedure of sticking closely to a recipe the first time I use it, I didn't make any adjustment.

I left it to prove in two portions in my medium round bannetons, which in retrospect was rather over optimistic as there was little evidence after two hours of any increase in size. I think the leaven was ok, but the dough was just so tight it had no chance. Or maybe the evil eye struck after I took phase two out of the airing cupboard...

I went ahead and baked them anyway, and they produced two squat loaves of a density I don't think I've ever seen before. Sampling a slice with our house guest, we decided it was quite tasty but the texture was off putting. 'You could slice it and dry it out in the oven,' said the house guest. 'It would make fabulous biscuits.'

So I did. Now, instead of two dense loaves with their own gravitational fields, I have tooth-defying dry slices of former loaves, each with such density that they appear to be forming their own galaxy in the storage tin.

Over the next week I shall be grabbing every Greek person I can talk to so that I can enquire earnestly into the right texture for eftazimo. And I'm going to have another go with more water, because the taste was lovely (although quite sweet, with a total of 4 tbsp of sugar in the whole recipe, might cut that down a bit next time). Wish me luck avoiding the evil eye...

Today's batch

More sourdoughs, unleashing the power of my three mothers simultaneously. In this endeavour, I was given enormous help by the spare sideboard we were given in July, and which used to live in the garage, providing a home for extra tins of stuff. And beer. As mum was bringing down her old kitchen cabinets for us, we needed to remove the sideboard to make way. I dithered about where it should go, until it struck me that if we removed the legs, it could sit happily underneath the long worktop in the kitchen in front of the radiator and furnish an extra work surface which would be ideal for bulk fermenting and proving dough. It made a huge difference. And it's somewhere to stash my bread making kit.

With mother A (Clive's white flour mother and the more sluggish of the three) I decided to go for a white flour loaf with ground seeds. Mother B (Clive's rye flour mother and the liveliest of them) was destined for a Price's bakery rye/wholemeal/white flour dough, and mother C (my own dear creation, and of middling liveliness) was to grapple with a 50/50 spelt/white flour dough.

I fed them all the morning before, and made the dough that evening with a reduced mother content so that they could bulk ferment overnight. I didn't stint with the water this time. They were all very happy sitting under the worktop, and I gave them a fold and a further two hour rest at lunchtime, then a final mould. Those which didn't prove in a banneton I shaped and placed on my thick Stellar baking trays which I intended to place directly on the granite slabs in the oven, thus hopefully avoiding last week's soft bottoms.

I was really pleased with all of them. All rose nicely, baked beautifully and were delightfully firm of the bottom. The holey texture is back (although it could have been holier) and the taste of each was amazing. We had all three breads (and an unpictured Tiger loaf) on the table for dinner, the Brazil Nut and the Cossack joining us for a hugely convivial evening. All drew plaudits and approval; the spelt loaf was the first to disappear.

White with seeds



Rye/wholemeal/white



Half spelt

Today's batch

Last weekend I realised that I needed to get a new sack of strong white flour as I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with the current one. During the week I called up Shipton Mill and paid for a fresh 25kg sack, then popped up to fetch it from Frampton during my lunch break on Friday. I wobbled upstairs with it over my shoulder when I got home and stashed it in the Flour Storage Area (spare spare bedroom). As I wrestled it into position, I tried to think how long I'd had the old one, but couldn't quite remember. It was only later, when I came across the first invoice, that I realised that I'd used up 25 whole kilos in the space of eight weeks. I know I've been a busy baker but this did surprise me. Let's see how long the new one lasts...

Today I decided to go for sourdough with a vengeance, making a couple of loaves from each of my three mothers. I also chose to try out a couple of new flours from my stash.

First dough was Peter Cook's recipe for a rye-ish sourdough loaf and which I've done before. I used some Wessex Mill wholemeal rye for the first time in this. The dough was quite firm and easy to work. As with all the loaves this time, I left them to prove free form on the worktop, no bannetons this week.

Second dough used a white sourdough mother with Bacheldre Mill oak smoked. I picked this one up out of interest and wasn't at all sure how it would come out and whether the smokiness would compete with the sourdoughness or whether they'd work together. I stinted a bit on the water for this one as I've become very wary of proved loaves collapsing on turning out/slashing and this doesn't seem to happen with less-hydrated doughs. However, I've lost my lovely holes too. I think I need to be brave enough to hydrate fully and take care not to over prove.

Third dough was another white sourdough mother with half Shipton Mill Baker's No. 1 (new sack vintage) and half Wessex Mill wholemeal spelt. Again I was a bit reticent with the water.

I left all the dough to bulk ferment for five hours, then proved for an hour and a half/two hours ten minutes depending on where they were in the queue for the oven. They all proved nicely and were easy to lift onto the peel, no collapsing today. I slashed each type of dough differently so that I could identify them with confidence afterwards, and today I was really pleased with the slashing, it came out really nicely.

I baked one loaf on the top shelf with two on the bottom, and to avoid too dark a crust I tried turning the heat down by ten degrees after fifteen or twenty minutes, turning the top loaf around by a hundred and eighty degrees as I did so. The top loaf still was much darker than the bottom ones both times, and the bottoms of all the loaves were quite soft. I don't know if this was because of the lowering of the temperature, or because I chucked a thick layer of semolina on the worktop when I left them proving so they wouldn't stick, and this got in the way of the dough making proper contact with the granite in the oven. More tweaking required...

As you'll see in the pictures, there were no proper sourdoughy holes in the loaves, so although they looked great on the outside (and they are yummy), there is still work to be done. And I'm not getting the temperature/length of bake quite right. I'd like them to be beautifully done but not so dark. I wonder is this the penalty you get with a fan oven?

The rye-ish one is delish - that recipe is a reliable one for producing a tasty loaf. The oaky smoky one tastes very smoky to me, but not at all to Tallboy. It's not an unpleasant taste, but it's a bit of a surprise. I think it would work best in a bread that you'd eat with some strong cheese or a hearty soup. The spelt loaf is very tasty indeed, although I chickened out and went down the half and half route. I'll have a go at a 100% one again at some point. Probably.

My day's work


Oaky smoky sourdough


Rye-ish sourdough


Half spelt, half not spelt sourdough

Today's Batch

Having said that we had plenty of bread and that I didn't need to make any more, I then went ahead and made loads. I think I felt a bit sorry for my poor shunned mothers. Or something.

I got a bit of an itch to try tiger bread too. Though it looks reticulated to me, not stripy as such. Anyway, I did a lot of searching online until I found a recipe I liked the look of, then based things on that (it was here, in Sandra's Cookbook). I did without the sesame oil and just used the recipe for the topping rather than the bread itself. The topping is yeasted, and you have to leave it to mousse up while the dough is in bulk ferment. Once you stir the topping it falls back to a batter kind of consistency, which I applied half way through the prove. This bread was a big hit with the family and with the Brazil Nut who was the beneficiary of one of the three loaves.

Peg got back from the States a few days ago and ordered me to make her a caraway seeded sourdough. And it was mum's birthday, and not able to think what to get her, I decided to make her a stollen. And then there were other sourdoughs to make while I was feeding my mothers...

I decided to do a feed before bedtime and an ambient bulk fermentation, but because I was a bit more organised than last week I fed the mothers nice and early so that I was able to start baking at 8 and didn't spend the whole day at it.

The normal sourdough was mostly white flour with the end of a packet of Half and Half in it. I held the water back a bit too, because dough I've made with that mother in the past has always turned out too loose.

The caraway seed sourdough was from a recipe in Andrew Whitley's book - it used a rye mother, some white rye flour, some Half and Half and some white bread flour. The smell was amazing and I couldn't wait to cut into the bread to see its texture but as it was for someone else I had to restrain myself. But I took my camera to her house so that I could sneak a snap if she started on it while I was there. She did, and I got a taste too - delish and definitely a do-it-again!

The stollen was another of Andrew's recipes, and I spent most of the time referring back to the recipe to convince myself that I'd used the right amount of ingredients as the lump of dough seemed pitifully small. It was right, and it all turned out right in the end, even though I didn't have any ground almonds. I did have some flaked almonds and a coffee grinder which only smelled a bit of curry spices. The marzipan was pretty sticky but this seemed to work well within the stollen as it merged into the adjacent dough. I soaked the fruit overnight in a combination of Cointreau and cherry liqueur which worked really nicely, and I substituted dried apricots for the candied peel he specifies. There's something horrid about candied peel, I'm ok if I know it's there and can pick it out, but if it catches me by surprise it renders every subsequent mouthful a) a minefield and b) tainted anyway by that ghastly, pervasive and revolting taste. The recipe didn't call for any spice and was very nice without, but I might be tempted to add a spot next time.

I clearly still need a bit of help with my slashing and shaping. The white sourdough was a much firmer dough than usual and I was far happier with it. It rose nicely in the banneton and turned out without deflation. I made several slashes along the top but only in one direction, which I think was my undoing. The boule I made from the rest of the dough I slashed in a a curved spoke type manner but I did it half way during proving which I think was a mistake. The top of the loaf looks lovely but sadly the slashes didn't allow enough escape and the loaf suffered a tectonic consequence...

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr




Hmmmmmmmm...

White sourdough




Rye caraway seed sourdough




Lovely peel-free stollen