Classic koulourakia from Smyrna
Among the most fragrant and delicious koulourakia, these Easter cookies have a crumbly, buttery dough that melts in your mouth. The chef uses sheep and goat milk butter for its wonderfully rustic, distinctive aroma, and adds a portion of olive oil (a lovely evolution of tradition!) to make them even more tender and crisp. If you prefer, you can substitute the sheep and goat milk butter with fresh cow’s milk butter (the kind wrapped in paper), or use a blend of the two, or even a Corfu-style butter. What you should definitely not do, however, is replace the butter with margarine – their flavor will be noticeably inferior and flat.
Chef: Nena Ismyrnoglou
Prep: 50’
Cooking: 20’
Ingredients
(for roughly 40 pieces)
• 500 g all-purpose flour, plus 100 g more if needed
• 150 g dairy butter (the kind sold in a jar), at room temperature
• 150 ml olive oil
• 150 ml fresh milk
• 150 g powdered sugar, mixed with
• 1 tbsp orange zest or 1/2 tbsp bitter orange zest
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 egg yolks, for brushing sesame seeds and nigella seeds, for sprinkling (optional)
Method
In a large bowl, combine the 500 g of flour with the salt and baking powder. In another, larger bowl, add the butter, olive oil, milk, powdered sugar with the zest and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk or your hands until the mixture is fully combined. Gradually add 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 incorporate the other 100 g of flour, but be careful, the dough should remain soft.
How do you know it’s ready? Try shaping a cookie: the dough will tend to shrink back, so you’ll need to shape it quickly and confidently, without overworking or warming it, as that will cause it to release its oils. If the dough doesn’t hold together, breaks easily, or is difficult to handle, add a bit more flour and knead until incorporated.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Shape the dough into cookies in any form you like – round, oval, braided, spiraled. The traditional shape for Smyrna-style cookies, however, is the “little boat”: take small pieces of dough, roll them into thin ropes, form each into a loose “S” shape, then press the three strands together and flatten. Arrange the cookies on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Lightly beat the egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of water and brush the cookies. You can sprinkle them with sesame and nigella seeds for extra flavor.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden.
Classic tsoureki bread
Giannis Vlassiou and Dimitris Dritsas, from Temps Perdu, are known not only for their exceptional handmade puff pastries but also for their outstanding sourdough tsoureki. They prepare it using an active natural starter, but for convenience, they share a version made with a simpler pre-ferment prepared the day before. The starter enhances the flavor, texture and shelf life of this sweet, fragrant bread, giving it more complex aromas and a better crumb structure.
Chefs: Giannis Vlassiou & Dimitris Dritsas
Prep: 2 hours
Resting: 12 hours approx.
Baking: 20-25’
Ingredients
(makes four tsoureki loaves)
For the starter
• 250 g flour for tsoureki (strong bread flour)
• 150 g water
• 1 g fresh yeast (a very small amount, but it will work overnight in the pastry, while more yeast will be added later)
For the dough
Stage 1
• 500 g flour for tsoureki (strong bread flour)
• 240 g sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 10 g mahleb
• 2 g ground mastic gum
• 7 g salt
• 2.5 g ground cardamom
• 1 Madagascar vanilla bean
Stage 2
• 165 g eggs (about 3 medium eggs)
• 1 egg yolk from a large egg or 2 from small eggs
• 75 g milk
• 1 tbsp olive oil
Stage 3
• 130 g cow’s milk butter, at room temperature
• 30 g fresh yeast
For the topping
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• sliced almonds
Method
For the starter: Starting your preparation the night before, combine the water, flour and yeast in a bowl. Mix well until the mixture is smooth and fully combined. Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature overnight.
For the dough: Once the starter is ready to go, measure out and arrange all the ingredients according to the three stages.
In the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl), add the Stage 1 ingredients along with the starter. Knead using the dough hook or your hands until the sugar has fully dissolved and a fairly firm dough forms (about 4 minutes in the mixer or 10 minutes by hand). If the dough feels too stiff and dry at this stage, add a small amount of the Stage 2 liquids; otherwise, add them in the next step.
In a second bowl, mix the Stage 2 ingredients and add them gradually to the dough in 3-4 doses, allowing each addition to be fully absorbed before adding the next. By the end of this process, the dough should be soft and elastic. In the same way, add the butter in 3-4 doses, again waiting for each portion to be fully incorporated before adding the next. With the final addition of butter, add the fresh yeast as well, simply crumbled, not dissolved in liquid. It will quickly incorporate during kneading as it comes into contact with the butter.
Once all the ingredients are fully incorporated and the dough is smooth and elastic, transfer it to a clean, spacious bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest in a warm place for about 30 minutes.
Remove the air from the dough by pressing it firmly with your fists, then let it rest again for another 30 minutes.
Transfer the dough to your work surface and divide it into eight pieces of about 200 g each. Shape each piece into a rope about 20 cm long and place them on the counter. Cover well with plastic wrap so they don’t come into contact with air, and let them rest for 25-30 minutes at room temperature.
Gently reshape the ropes, stretching them to about 35 cm in length, then braid them in pairs to form four tsourekia. Transfer them to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
Cover loosely with plastic wrap or towels and let them rise in a warm place for about 2.5-3 hours, until doubled in volume.
Brush the tsoureki loaves with the egg wash and sprinkle with sliced almonds. Bake in a preheated oven at 150°C, using the fan setting, for 25-30 minutes, until they develop a nice golden color. Depending on your oven’s temperature and intensity, they may need slightly less or more baking time.
Tips: Maintaining the proper temperature during the fermentation stages – around 26-28°C – is essential for the texture and aroma of the final product. Also, the result improves significantly when the aromatics (mahleb, mastic, cardamom) are freshly ground.
This story first appeared in Kathimerini’s food supplement, Gastronomos.