T Stands for Baking

 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday.

For T this week (don't forget to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  with your drink related posts), I thought I would share a little of this and that. 

Last week was a mostly quiet week. We had some rain and some wind, and even when it was nice out the low tides at the beach weren't very convenient to walk.

I did a bit of baking instead.

I made an asparagus and cheddar cheese quiche, as you can see in the photo. I also made a pulled pork pizza, but no photo of that.

Finally I decided to try one of those braided Easter breads with the colored eggs included. I know it was not Greek Easter this past weekend, nor am I Greek, but the King Arthur Flour Sunday newsletter included this loaf of Greek Tsoureki bread, and I was not only curious about trying an Easter egg loaf, but I also wanted to try out this spice mahlep or mahleb. I also saw it under the name Mahalepi too. It is made from ground cherry seeds, not the whole seeds but the inner kernel. 

I ordered some  of this spice from Amazon, and it came in time for Easter weekend baking.

The dough also contained crushed anise seeds and orange zest and smelled wonderful.

Here's my plaited bread just before the second rise.

After my second rise.

The recipe called for 2- 2 1/2 hour second rise, I stopped after an hour because I still had some good definition to my plaiting and quite a bit of volume.

Most of my plaiting disappeared during the bake. I was a a little disappointed as I am trying to get a more distinct plaited loaf. I guess this just gives me more reasons to try another loaf.  Smile.

The recipe also mentioned (in an afterward) using uncolored eggs and switching them to the colored ones after the bake. I don't really mind the little bit of red that spread into the dough, but if you didn't want that, you could switch out eggs after baking.

Here is the recipe I used: King Arthur-Greek Tsoureki.

I was also curious about the red eggs since here our eggs are often pastel colors for spring.  The red stands for the blood of Christ. I found this nice little write up about them online. 

Red eggs (kokkina avga) are a traditional part of the Greek Easter Sunday celebration. They are lovingly made, either with onion skins or dye and then woven and baked into a tsoureki (three-braided Easter bread signifying the Holy Trinity), used as table decorations, and are the key piece to a fun game called tsougrisma, which tests the eggs' strength—and perhaps the players' strategy.  You can read more if you are interested here: Red Eggs

I made the red for my eggs with a bit of vinegar, water and a couple of drops of deep red food coloring, concentrated not the type you get in  4 pack at the grocery store. For that you would probably need more red. I would like to try the onion skins sometime though.

So how about a slice of bread with some tea? Or coffee?

I will definitely make this bread again, leaving out the   hard boiled eggs when Easter is over.  It tasted delicious.

Thanks for visiting. And have a great T day.