Happy Easter!!

For this year's Easter, I wanted to make something special that's not a dessert. While researching for a specialty bread for my paper in Artisan Breads class last year, I stumbled across an image of a bread shaped into a golden braided wreath, embedded with colored eggs. Called tsoureki, (a.k.a. Lambropsomo or Lambrokouloura) it's a Greek sweet bread traditionally served during the Holy Week of Easter.

The brioche-like dough is enriched with plenty of butter, sugar, eggs, and
milk, finished with a topping of almond slivers or sesame seeds. It also contains spices and flavorings unique to that region: mahlab, a spice made from St. Lucie cherry, has a flavor similar to almond and cherry; and masticha is a resin from the mastic tree, with a refreshing piney, cedar flavor.

The bread is shaped into three-stranded braids (the three strands representing the Holy Trinity), and left as a rope or formed into a ring. Traditionally, a red-dyed egg (kokkina
avga) that symbolizes the blood of Christ, is pressed into the bread before being proofed and baked.

I actually found the recipe in the Sunset Breads cookbook that's been in our possession since we came to U.S. (that would be around 20 years...). Looking through the recipe, it was pretty straight forward and simple enough. It called for five dyed eggs, but I made three, just enough for Dad, Mom, and me.
To prepare for the actual making of the bread, I had to dye the eggs of course. But I've always wanted to use natural dyes, instead of the mysterious Red#40 and Yellow#5 to color the eggs. A short Google search provided me with enough info. For reds and pinks, raspberry or red beets; for oranges and yellows, turmeric; and for blues, red cabbages. I mixed in a teaspoon of vinegar for every cup of liquid used. I used pureed red beets, about 2 tablespoons of turmeric dissolved in water, and the juice from our homemade red cabbage pickle. I poured the dyes into jars with the (soft-boiled)eggs, closed the lid, and kept them in the fridge for about two days.
The result....

They turned out pretty nice! The blue turned out especially well. It's really cool how the red cabbage pickle juice is reddish violet, yet turns the egg royal blue. It's also interesting how the eggs appear to have these "bands" (especially noticeable in the pink one). Maybe the shell is thicker around those areas, so the color doesn't adhere as well?

Now that my eggs are ready, I prepared the dough. Again, it was a pretty straight forward enriched bread, with milk, eggs, sugar, and butter. Traditionally, it's supposed to be spiced with mahlab and masticha, but I substituted with vanilla and almond extract, along with some lemon and orange zest. I pushed the eggs into available spaces. They've been soft-boiled, so the additional baking will cook them further to a hard-cooked stage. I was afraid of using raw eggs, since I thought they might explode during baking. The recipe made one loaf large enough to accomodate three eggs.

The recipe called for five colored eggs...I guess I can squeeze in two more somewhere on there...
I gave it an egg white wash, and baked it.

I always like to watch the first fifteen minutes of baking, when the oven spring takes place. An oven spring is a rapid expansion of the dough that happens in the early stage of baking, right when it hits the hot environment of the oven. And in this case, it was a good thing I was watching. As the bread expanded, one of the colored eggs started sliding out of its pocket (the bread's buttery surface didn't help either). It slipped right off with a KER-PLOP! on the oven bottom.
Yikes!! I quickly opened the door, grabbed the egg, pushed it firmly back into the gaping hole in the bread, and shut the door. All in a few seconds. *phew* Man that was close!

It baked into a beautiful braided loaf, with lovley golden crust! Now I know why the recipe called for five eggs. Once proofed and baked, there is actually enough space for five eggs.

Another thing I learned: natural dyes don't do well under heat. The natural pigments do not tolerate intense heat, and tended to burn. The blue one had some burn marks on them, although the yellow seemed OK. I took out the blue and the red and repainted them before putting them back into the bread--just for the sake of pictures :P

As for the bread itself, it was sweet, soft, and delicious! It's sweeter than brioche, but not as rich... it was more like challah. It was perfumed with vanilla, almond, and citrus. Now I wonder how the mahlab and masticha would be like in this bread.

So next time I make this bread, I'll see if I can find those spices and dye the eggs using regular food color since it tolerates heat well. I'll use the natural dyes for regular Easter eggs that won't be cooked further. There's something to look forward to next year :)