Koulouri Thessalonikis, Take 2

February 5, 2017February 6, 2017 georgiagilmour4 Comments

Koulouri Thessalonikis

This is a take 2 of trying to reproduce the wonderful bread rings called koulouri: street food, breakfast food, snack food, these rings are sold all over the place in Thessaloniki, Greece. Of course I’ve done many more attempts over these years but the result has never been nearly as good.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

And hooray, now there’s a video of this recipe that you can watch (there was a request for that in one of the comments to the take 1)! I’m sure there’ll be no problem with it being in Greek as you might as well just try to reproduce the movements of the baker with the help of the recipe that follows. Here’s the video from the SKAI’s Chef on Air TV program – start watching from 3:55 if you don’t know Greek.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

The first koulouri I posted on this blog back in 2012 was with a slightly different recipe. I think overall those first koulouria (plural for koulouri) looked more authentic but almost 5 years later there’s no way I can actually compare the two recipe other than by appearance.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

1 year ago – Whole Wheat Fig Bars

2 years ago – How to Make Silky Cream Cheese at Home

3 years ago – Apricot Oatmeal Bar With Pistachios

4 years ago – After Apples Come the Berries

5 years ago – 2 Energy-Boosting Sweets to Keep Your Mind and Spirit Up

Koulouri Thessalonikis or ΚΟΥΛΟΥΡΙ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ adapted from chefonair.gr will make a dozen of soft and a tad sweet bread rings. I’ve made several changes to the original recipe which included filling the rings with chocolate cream cheese.

Ingredients:

1/2 kg all purpose flour
4 Tbs seed oil – I used olive oil
1 Tbs salt – I used less
1/2 cup lukewarm water for the dough – I needed more
2 Tbs sunflower seed oil for brushing the baking sheet – I used paper / baking mat
2 cups lukewarm water for the sugary water – I cut this in half
1 cup sugar for the sugary water – I cut this in half
2 cups sesame seeds – I had too little of these (be generous!)
3 Tbs flour for the yeast
15 g fresh yeast – too lazy to check the yeast conversion website, I put in a bit of instant yeast (it should have been 1.76 tsp of instant yeast or 2.65 tsp of active dry yeast)
1/2 cups lukewarm water for the yeast
2 Tbs sugar for the yeast – I used a bit of honey

Procedure:

Pour lukewarm water into a bowl and dissolve the fresh yeast with the 2 Tbs of sugar. Add 3 Tbs of flour and mix. Cover with plastic foil and leave to rise for 30 minutes at room temperature.

(The original recipe asked for the mixer) Place the flour, the yeast mixture, the oil, the water and the salt to a big bowl and start kneading (3 minutes with the mixer running at low speed and then 5 minutes more at high, a bit longer by hand). Cover the bowl with a towel / plastic foil and leave to rest for 30 minutes and then knead again (5 minutes with a mixer, longer by hand).

Divide the dough into 15-18 pieces (I made 12 balls) and roll each piece into a rope about 30 cm long. Mix sugar with lukewarm water in a plate to create sugary water (it helps keep almost all the sesame seeds on place and adds some colour). Dip the ropes first into the sugary water and then into sesame seeds (place them on a shallow plate: I would suggest keeping some as a reserve because they stick so well and disappear pretty fast). Pinch the two edges to create a ring. Place the koulouria on a greased baking sheet (or line your sheet with parchment paper / baking mat), leaving space between them as they will puff up. Cover with a towel / plastic foil and leave to rise for 30 minutes (my first batch was rising for a bit longer already shaped while the second was rising longer as dough balls).

Bake in the preheated oven at 170’C for 15-20 minutes (mine took 20 minutes).

Koulouri Thessalonikis

Remarks: You can see how naked the second batch looks, as I was running out of the sesame seeds… For this recipe you do need quite a lot of them if you want a really authentic look and taste! And by the way, with the sugary water trick these seeds do not come off as massively as they would with dipping them in just plain water.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

The second batch also looks more browned as I was using a black baking mat for these. It’s a pity today on such a beautiful snowy winter day there’s not much light so the koulouria look rather blueish. Which they don’t 🙂

Koulouri Thessalonikis

I added less sugar to the dough and a bit less salt and still I think the crumb tastes pretty salty which comes into contrast with the slightly sweet outside thanks to the sugary water.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

Result: These traditional Greek bred rings are soft and chewy. I would eat them plain or with cheese and salad – although the original recipe suggests slicing them and filling them with chocolate. Which I imagine is also nice as bread is multipurpose!

Koulouri Thessalonikis

As for the crumb, koulouri is much softer than its Russian counterpart bublik (which has a dense crumb and poppy seeds instead of sesame). Bublik is also larger and thicker, with a more browned surface. Gosh, I love both 🙂

Koulouri Thessalonikis

By the way, all in the mood of the first Saturday of the month when we participate in the local recycling activity, I recycled the sugary water into a berry coffee cake. Worked out just fine.

Koulouri Thessalonikis

This post goes to the by Country and the Yeast Bread collections.

Pane a Spiga con Patate or Spike-Like Potato Bread

December 31, 2016December 31, 2016 georgiagilmour1 Comment

Pane con Patate

These last days of the year I’ve been baking a lot – making up for the days I’m going to be away from the family oven soon 🙂 Among all that I could manage to bake and squeeze into the freezer for my parents, this potato bread in particular stands out of the crowd. This is an Italian recipe which originally calls for lard but which I quite successfully turned into a vegetarian version, using butter instead.

Pane con Patate

It looks kind of funny too. It’s supposed to resemble a spike (spiga) but mine looks more like some insect. Well it might as well but it certainly tastes like white bread! 🙂

Pane con Patate

A year ago – Architectural Walks in Kolpino Part 6 – Prospekt Lenina

Two years ago – Old-Fashioned Apple Slab and Greek Crumble

Three years ago – Goodbye 2013

Four years ago – Let Me Invite You into the New Year

Five years ago – Flammekueche

Pane a Spiga con Patate or Italian Spike-Like Potato Bread translated and adapted from the original recipe at ilpane.blogspot.com will make a giant loaf of soft and sweetish white bread.

Ingredients:

500 g flour (or farina 0 if you can get it), sifted
200 g water
12 g fresh yeast – I used an equivalent 1.4 tsp of instant yeast
10 g salt
15 g sugar
25 g home made lard – I used butter instead
300 g of boiled and pureed potatoes (weigh them after pureeing)

Procedure:

Place all the ingredients in a big bowl, adding the pureed potatoes last. Knead the dough pretty well, about 10 minutes, then place the dough into a greased bowl. Leave to rise for 1 hour. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and form 2 logs (batards), one smaller than the other (roughly a 1/3 and a 2/3) and leave them to rise for 30 minutes. With a help of a rolling pin or just with your hand make an indent in the center of the bigger log and place there the smaller one, pinching it so that they stick to each other (I had to reshape them both after the 30-minute rise as they were quite puffed at that point). Cover the loaf and leave it to rise for 40 more minutes. Dust it abundantly with ground bran (almost forgot to do it and dusted it with lour instead) and cut the top part with scissors to resemble a spike (I cut the lower part too and in a much freer fashion so to speak 🙂 ). Bake in the preheated 220 °C oven for 30 minutes or until your bread is done (mine took a bit longer).

Pane con Patate

Remarks: I used leftover potato puree which my Mother makes with milk and butter (plus salt). There were little bits of it visible in the crumb and I think the puree also added sweetness to the bread. I guess that eaten with some soup or cheese will counterbalance the sweetness. The loaf is huge but has baked through just fine.

Pane con Patate

Result: Soft and really white, a tad on the sweet side with a contrasting ‘burnt’ crust. Flavourful. The recipe is quite easy (having leftover potato puree helps a lot too) and yet the result is pretty impressive. And it does taste Italian to me!

Pane con Patate

The air bubbles and the crust:

Pane con Patate

If you are looking for more Italian bread, here’s another – sourdough – version of potato bread (also with herbs) Pane con Patate ed Erba Cipollina, sourdough oatmeal bread Pane di avena a lievitazione naturale, leavened Italian Panini all’Olio, Pane Tipo Altamura, Tuscan Bread, Stirato or Italian Baguettes, or simply Italian Bread.

This post goes to the Leftovers, Yeast Bread and By Country recipe collections.

sweet

Bulgarian Peach Sladkish and Czech Jam Kolache

November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 georgiagilmourLeave a comment

With the lack of the light and the overall November blues atmosphere I seem to be reluctant to take photos of the things I’m baking these days. To make these pictures I had to use a lamp… Each year November seems to catch me off-guard, such a hard month. December somehow passes much easier as half of it at least is taken over by all the New Year and Christmas preparations (for those who do get involved). And then the days grow longer. But as for now, we are still a month away from that!

Sladkish s Praskovi

So why not dream about sun with this bright yellow cake (made extra-yellow thanks to the lamp 🙂 the recipe for which comes from the sunny Bulgaria. This country is famous for its peaches (as well as roses – and yogurt – and brine cheese…) so no surprise these guys know how to use them. The peaches I used were from Greece though 🙂 After baking with apples for so many months in a row I was really relieved to bake with something else!

Sladkish s Praskovi

1 year ago – Heritage Days in Avignon

2 years ago – Petroskoi or Petrozavodsk, Capital of Karelian Republic

3 years ago – Multigrain Bread and the Best View

4 years ago – Ramble On

5 years ago – 1 Idea for 2 Delicious Dinners

Sladkish s Praskovi or Bulgarian Peach Cake translated and adapted from www.zajenata.bg will make a big white cake with sunny peaches on top.

Ingredients:

1 kg peaches (or other fruit), sliced – I used almost an entire can of (Greek) peaches in syrup, drained
2 eggs
1 cup (200 ml) sugar
1 tea cup sour milk or smetana – I used tvorog (5 % cottage cheese) + smetana (15% sour cream) + kefir
2 cups all-purpose flour – I also added some vanilla extract
½ package baking powder – measured out something like 2 tsp
100 ml vegetable oil – I used sunflower
a pinch of salt
powdered sugar, for decorating the top – skipped that

Procedure:

Beat the eggs with sugar, add smetana or sour milk, oil and salt. Then add in the flower sifted with the baking powder, so that you get a thick smooth mixture.

Grease and flour your baking dish and preheat the oven to 180 °С.

Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for about 5 minutes. Then take the dish out of the oven and arrange the peach slices on top of the par-baked batter. Return to the oven for 30 minutes more. When the cake is ready, cool it and decorate it with powdered sugar.

Sladkish s Praskovi

Remarks: Although I par-baked the cake for more than 5 minutes, I also needed more time for it to be ready during the final baking. I guess the baking pan was a bit small for this cake. So I would add more peaches or bake the cake in a larger pan. Be sure to drain your peaches thoroughly if you’re using canned fruit like me.

Sladkish s Praskovi

Results: This cake can easily be used as a birthday / gift cake. It looks nice (even though it sunk in the middle a bit) and it keeps its shape. But as soon as you start cutting it, the peach slices inevitably fall apart 🙂

Grandma's Kolache

My second recipe that I baked the same day comes from a probably less sunny country, the Czech Republic. I have this idee fixe each time I want to bake something from the comfort food category – and that is jam envelopes, konvertiki s povidlom (pryaniki or Russian gingerbread belong to this category as well). This recipe comes nearly close to the thing I wanted so much.

Grandma's Kolache

Grandma’s Kolache or Czech Envelopes with Jam adapted from www.mrbreakfast.com will make 20 or so soft buns filled with your favourite jam. Follow the link to see the entire recipe. Kolache derives from the Old Slavonic kolo which means circle or wheel, and the Russian and East European bread kalach is actually round (more or less – depending on its local variation).

My changes and remarks:

I used butter instead of shortening, added less salt and vanilla extract, but had to put in more flour. As for the filling I chose homemade apple puree and just a few of the buns had apple jam inside.

I made less kolache – only 20 instead of the suggested 24.

I baked my kolache a bit longer than stated in the recipe. The jam started flowing out of the buns when I moved them to the upper shelf in the oven for several minutes. So the next batch I baked only on the middle rack and they rose better. On this photo the top kolache is with the apple jam (I used mostly the fruit part) and the other two are with the apple puree:

Grandma's Kolache

Result: These very soft mini-pies will remind you of your childhood years… even if you have never tasted jam envelopes before 🙂

Adding these recipes to the Country-specific and Sweet collections where you will find other recipes with peaches and apples.

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

October 13, 2016 georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Horiatiko fillo

My sister came back from her Greek trip some weeks ago and brought us gostintsy (souvenirs) from the sunny country. We now have our stock of oregano refilled and I have new Greek books which will help get me through the winter. And there was this herby olive oil from Corfu as well:

Horiatiko fillo

That was a good excuse to make one of my favourite things when it comes to savoury and comfort food – pies. A successful marriage between Russian fresh cheese filling and elastic Greek pastry made with olive oil was it, and as I had no Greek alcohol required for it too, I used some (pseudo) Russian vodka. The pastry recipe comes from Dina Nikolaou, Greek chef who travels around Greece and then presents the region from the gastronomic side of life on TV. The great thing about this pastry is that it doesn’t need lots of time to rise – it actually only rests half an hour in the fridge and then the yeast makes its magic right in the oven, rising the pastry just enough to be soft and not enough to get all soggy! Teleio!

Horiatiko fillo

1 year ago – Orange and David Gilmour

2 years ago – An Autumn Day in Lappeenranta, Finland

3 years ago – Bread-therapy for a Tired Traveller

4 years ago – Autumn Colours and Karelia

5 years ago – Creamy Peach Tart and Kitchen Reborn

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry (pastry recipe adapted from Village Pastry with Olive Oil, Horiatiko fillo me elaiolado / Χωριάτικο φύλλο, με ελαιόλαδο from dinanikolaou.gr) will make a Greek-size pie with a soft filling and just enough pastry (I know I’ve said this about so many pies but you just can’t keep yourself from saying this when you taste it!).

Ingredients:

for the pastry (enough for 2 big pies):

500 g all-purpose flour
30 ml or about 3 Tbs olive oil (I had to add some water too)
1 egg, lightly beaten
30 ml milk (mine was 2.5% fat)
8-10 g fresh yeast dissolved in 1/2 cup (100 ml) lukewarm water (I used 1.5 tsp active dry yeast instead)
2 1/2 Tbs tsipouro or ouzo (well, I had to go for vodka!)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

for the filling (enough for half of the pastry recipe):

500 g 5% fat cottage cheese / quark (tvorog) – might as well be feta or brynza or a mixture
leftover mashed potatoes (optional but good)
some grated hard cheese
2 small eggs
fresh herbs like spring onion, coriander and parsley, chopped
salt, pepper, dried oregano and seasoning like khmeli-suneli

Procedure:

First, make the pastry: Place fluffed flour in a big bowl and make a well in the center. Pour in olive oil, beaten egg, milk, yeast with the water it was dissolved in, tsipouro / ouzo / vodka and add salt and pepper. Knead lightly with your hands until you get soft and flexible dough. (Here I had to add a bit more water cause my 500 g of flour seemed like a lot for the indicated amount of liquid). Divide the dough into 2 equal parts, wrap in plastic foil and place in the fridge for 30 minutes (I left them there for more than an hour).

Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Mix all the filling ingredients (a good idea would be to add all except eggs and try it for salt) and put aside.

Now you can proceed with assembling the pie: Take one piece of the pastry and roll it out finely on a floured surface (I used only one piece of the dough both for the bottom and the top layers). It should be larger than the baking dish you’ll be using so that the borders are covered too. Place it onto your greased / laid with parchment paper baking dish. Roll out the second piece (or the leftovers from trimming the overhanging edges, which I did) to the very size of your baking dish – this will be the top layer.

Place the filling evenly on top of the bottom pastry layer and cover it with the top layer, pinching the edges. Don’t forget to cut slits in the top layer to help escape the steam (and occasional cheese liquid).

Bake in the preheated to 200 ‘C oven for about 30 minutes. The pie should start getting brown on the top (the top layer got browned faster than I expected so keep an eye on it).

Horiatiko fillo

Remarks: You will get more pastry than you would need for a very big pie (I baked my pie in the biggest cast iron pan we have, greased). I’m keeping my second half wrapped in the freezer for future comfort-food pies.

Horiatiko fillo

Result: The pastry is just perfectly elastic and keeps shape nicely – it also rolls out easily after its rest in the fridge. The filling was a bit too bland to be called Greek, so I would suggest adding either more salt or a different kind of cheese like the salty feta or brynza (super-salty brine cheese) or at least making it 50/50 with the cottage cheese.

Horiatiko fillo

When you take the pie out of the oven, the pastry is all smooth at first but then these nice cracks appear on the surface patricularly when you cut your huge slices. And the top of this pie is also crunchy, oraia!

Horiatiko fillo

To make your life even more comfortable and cozy in this cold season (we’ve somehow skipped the autumn here and headed straight into oh-no winter, you just read some Moomin stories!

This post goes to country-specific recipes and Lunch / Dinner suggestions where you will find more Greek / Greek-inspired pies.

sweet · sweet bread

Korvapuustit, Finnish Cinnamon and Cardamom Buns

June 1, 2016June 1, 2016 georgiagilmour4 Comments

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

A quick food stop for cardamom and cinnamon buns from Finland. Just pour yourself a big mug of tea or cocoa and enjoy these cuties! Who cares if it’s summer outside when you can indulge yourself in some sweet treat? Do share it with the loved ones, though.

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

According to the author of this recipe, the Finnish korvapuustit stands for slapped ears. I’m not sure such a name can pay justice to these sweet buns with freshly ground cardamom though 🙂 To me they look rather like snails – the shape of some of them was pretty much similar to a snail with a snail’s ‘neck’ which got separated from the ‘body’ during the baking (see in the background in the photo below).

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

Anyway, these buns were really pretty:

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

1 year ago – St Petersburg the Magnificent and Upside-Down Pear Chocolate Cake

2 years ago – Provence and Tapenade on Crackers

3 years ago – Petrogradskaya Side, St Petersburg

4 years ago – Fried Flatbread and Beans a la Grecque

Korvapuustit or Finnish Cinnamon & Cardamom Buns adapted from nami-nami.blogspot.com will make chewy flavourful sugary buns. For the entire recipe go to the original website.

My changes: I had to use more flour as the dough seemed a bit too sticky. I substituted caster sugar with regular granulated sugar for the dough and brown sugar for the filling, and used some brown sugar instead of pearl sugar for the topping. I added less cardamom, yeast, butter and salt in the dough (also, my butter got completely melted when I was warming it up in the microwave).

Remarks: Although I rolled the dough out quite thin, the buns puffed up and the dough part got slightly oversized I think. My buns took under 15 minutes to get ready – I feared they would get too brown with the required 225 ‘C so I took them out a bit earlier.

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

Result: Apart from being very tasty and flavourful, these buns are fun to make! And fun to eat: unrolling them, pinching them off them piece by piece or just gobbling them down! Aren’t they cute?

Korvapuustit / Finnish Cinnamon Buns

You can find my blog posts on Finland here, here and here.

Craving for a different kind of sweet buns? Check out Apple Cinnamon Rolls, Cinnamon Buns, Cardamom Flavoured Cinnamon Rolls, Orange Sweet Rolls, Sweet Orange Rolls (haha but they ARE different!), Torta delle Rose or Red Currant and Marzipan Swirls.

This post goes to the Sweet and country-specific recipe collections.

sweet · sweet bread

Poppy Seed Twists for Easter

May 1, 2016May 2, 2016 georgiagilmour4 Comments

So fragile, so tender!

It’s Easter time in St Petersburg and after all the excruciatingly prolific snow we are actually having an early spring! So fragile, so tender!

So fragile, so tender!

Almost transparent…

So fragile, so tender!

For this Easter I decided to make something similar to what my Mom would do for the festive table back when we were kids – a poppy seed roll. Perfect timing – I found this recipe just in time for the occasion.

So fragile, so tender!

I remember the quite longish procedure of preparing the poppy seed filling which involved taking out the gigantically heavy meat grinder: mother would process the seeds and sugar through it and we would watch.

So fragile, so tender!

And we would also collect the first herbs and methodically keep the onion skins for the egg part of the Easter festive table. If you want to learn how to dye eggs with onion peels and spring plants, click here.

So fragile, so tender!

Since forever I don’t really like kulich (the traditional Easter-time sweet leavened bread), particularly that type which has raisins inside. But my Mom would make those too (in all sorts of enameled mugs usually found in all Soviet families) and put them all in a huge kastrjulya (pot) so that they do not dry out. But we would ignore them with my sister: we were in for the poppy seed & walnut rolls!

Mohnkringel or Poppy Seed Buns

1 year ago – Almond Biscotti and Sour Cream Snickerdoodles

2 years ago – Spring in Pavlovsk Park and Blueberry Muffins

2 years ago – St Petersburg the Great

4 years ago – More on Smart Use of Leftovers

Mohnkringel or Poppy Seed Twists adapted from www.seitanismymotor.com (who also notoriously invented the word:) will make tasty not over-sweet buns loaded with poppy seeds. For the entire recipe visit the link above.

My changes and remarks:

I substituted vegan ingredients with the usual ones (i.e. used cow’s milk instead of soy milk and vegetable oil instead of coconut oil). Also, instant dry yeast worked perfectly well for this recipe. As for the filling, I processed poppy seeds in blender (first I rinsed them and soaked in hot water for a while) and added honey instead of molasses or agave nectar. I didn’t add milk for the filling as it was already too runny, so had to ground some peanuts and throw them in too.

Then, when I was already folding the dough, the filling would just threaten to escape and break through the dough, so I decided to stop rolling the dough out (the second rolling) and made ‘twists’ instead of circles. I don’t have a donut pan so placed my kringel on a silicon mat.

Mohnkringel or Poppy Seed Buns

Result: Soft and chewy, just like I wanted. The flavour is nice and tangy (there’s all that lemon zest in the dough and the filling!). And the combination of poppy seeds + nuts is always a blast! I would add just a tiny bit more sugar though but not too much so that the balance is preserved.

Mohnkringel or Poppy Seed Buns

This recipe goes to the Sweet collection.

For more poppy seed ideas, check this Cardamom Flavoured Cinnamon Rolls.

bread · sourdough

Improvising with Sourdough Bread or Being Lazy?

March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 georgiagilmour2 Comments