12/17/2010 - Artos: Greek Celebration Bread

'Tis the season for christopsomos. Greek celebration breads, which fall under the general name of artos, are pretty similar in ingredients, but differ in shaping and tradition. BBA gives one formula for the dough, and then suggests christopsomos and lambropsomo as two variations of artos. Christopsomos, the traditional Christmas bread, features dried fruits that are red (I used dried cranberries) in addition to dark and golden raisins and walnuts, while the Easter lambropsomo features golden raisins, dried apricots, and slivered almonds. The breads are also shaped differently: christopsomos is a round loaf overlaid with a cross, while lambropsomo is a braided loaf with dyed, hard cooked eggs nestled in it.

This formula calls for barm or poolish. I haven't restarted a sourdough barm since my last one died. I have some in my freezer that I plan to get out in the near future, but that can wait until after Christmas. For now, I just made up the poolish, let it ferment for a few hours, and stuck it in the fridge overnight. Much easier than worrying about sourdough! The next morning, I stirred together the flour, salt, yeast, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves (this sounds good already, doesn't it?). Then I mixed in the poolish, orange zest, almond extract, eggs, honey, olive oil, and milk (ok, how about now?). I added the dark and golden raisins, dried cranberries, and chopped walnuts during the kneading, and then left the dough to rise for about an hour and a half. I turned out the dough onto the counter and put a third of it in a ziplock bag in the fridge. I shaped the remaining dough into a boule and placed it on a sheet pan to proof for another hour and half or so. Then I removed the dough from the fridge, split it in two, and rolled each portion into a snake. I laid these over the loaf on the sheet pan in a cross, split the ends, and coiled them. Then I baked the loaf for about 45 minutes. While it baked, I mixed up a glaze of water, sugar, honey, and lemon extract in a saucepan, which I brushed over the loaf immediately after removing it from the oven.

I was excited to shape this fancy loaf, but I must admit that I had no high hopes when it came to flavor or texture. I expected this to be a lot like panettone and stollen. Once I started kneading it, though, I became more interested. As you would expect, it was a very aromatic dough, and a pleasure to work with. And when it baked, my whole house smelled fabulous. We were very pleasantly surprised with this bread. In addition to being beautiful, it was flavorful and delicious, and very soft in texture. This is definitely my favorite of the fruit breads in BBA. There are just two things I would like to work on. First, most of the coiled ends of my cross uncoiled; clearly I need to pinch them to seal better next time. Second, the glaze stayed runny and sticky for a long time; I think next time I'll try using less water and see where that gets me.