In Search of Yiayia's Tsoureki

Thinking of family legacy and stories, I find myself thinking a lot about some of the family recipes that I want to make sure live on. One of those recipes is my Yiayia's (grandma's) Easter Bread recipe, called tsoureki in Greek. Every year growing up, we would receive a huge box of these braided sweet breads. We gave a good number of them to local family and friends, but we would still be left with a good number of loaves for ourselves. I would cherish the morning treat of toasted tsoureki with a little pat of butter on it, for as long as as they lasted.

After my Yiayia passed away in 2000, my dad began shipping boxes of the bread that the ladies at his local church make as a fundraiser. Although I love getting these loaves in the mail too, I want to make sure that this recipe doesn't become a distant memory. So, I've started my charge to learn how to make tsoureki. Let me just start by saying, although I really enjoy cooking, yeast breads have always been a challenge for me. Maybe it is that I lack the patience to knead as much as I should, or maybe it is that truly great breads rely on commercial grade ingredients and ovens. Either way, if Yiayia could do it, I'm going to give a good ole Karnoupakis try!

Today I gave my first try with a recipe that my Nona (godmother) Debbie pointed me to. I managed to find the Mahelpi (a spice made from ground wild cherry seeds) easily enough, but it was the cake yeast that evaded me. No local grocers carried the compressed yeast, so I called speciality stores and finally resorted to calling bakeries to ask(ok, begging) if I could buy some of their stock off of them. Finally, our local Jewish Deli and Bakery, D.Z. Aikens allowed me to buy 1 lb (roughly 12x what my recipe called for). Just another reason to love that place.

Here it is. Looks pretty good, right? Well, the exterior texture is a little less soft than I remember, but the interior has the right chew and suppleness to it. Unfortunately, the 3 tbsp. of sugar it called for wasn't nearly enough. I should have known that Yiayia didn't stick to a recipe. She liked to cook "until it looked right", according to my mom. Brendt and I are estimating that I should increase the sugar to 1/2 cup. I'll keep you posted as to how many tries it takes me to get the recipe right.