Sweet Bread with Sourdough (Brioche, Greek Tsoureki)

(Makes 2 brioches. Half the amounts for 1 brioche)

Preparing the sourdough

We need a strong sourdough in order to have the best result!

For preparing bread we need just an once-refreshed sourdough and we can start the preparation for kneading.

Brioche is a “heavy” dough and sourdough needs power to make it grow.

How to achieve this? We need 2 days in order on the 3^rd day to bake our brioche – recipes with sourdough need time but not effort!

More specifically:

• Let’s assume that we want to bake the bread on Saturday.
  So then on Thursday afternoon we start feeding the sourdough (an hour later from the moment you took it out from the refrigerator to let it take the room temperature) and once again on Thursday evening. On Friday morning we will feed it again (twice) and on Friday afternoon we will start the preparation of the dough that will be baked on Saturday.
  Thursday afternoon (17:00)
  take 50g of sourdough from the refrigerator, let it for one hour to get room temperature and then add 50g of water (room temperature), stir till sourdough is dissolved and then add 100 g of strong flour and mix. Place the sourdough in the bowl (preferably from glass however even a plastic one can be used). Cover with a towel or with plastic wrap and set aside to rest;
  Thursday evening (21:00)
  take 100g from the sourdough, add 50g of water (room temperature), stir till sourdough is dissolved and then add 100 g of strong flour and mix. Follow the above steps for sourdough to rest;
  Friday morning (8:00)
  keep 50 g from the sourdough, add 50g of water (room temperature) and stir till sourdough is dissolved and then add 100 g of strong flour and mix. Follow the above steps for sourdough to rest;
  Friday morning (12:00)
  keep 100 g from the sourdough, add 50g of water (room temperature) and stir till sourdough is dissolved and then add 100 g of strong flour and mix. Follow the above steps for sourdough to rest;
  Friday afternoon (17:00)
  keep 150 g from the sourdough, add 150g of water (room temperature) and stir till sourdough is dissolved and then add 100 g of strong flour and mix. Follow the above steps for sourdough to rest.
   

Friday evening at 20:00 we will start preparing the dough for the brioche.

Ingredients

Mixture A (dissolving the sourdough)

• all the quantity of the sourdough
• 150 ml milk (room temperature)

Mixture B

• 100 ml milk
• 400 g sugar
  (we may use also honey partially: 2 full spoons of honey can replace 50 g of sugar)
• 100 g butter
• grated zest of -1- orange
• 14 g mahlab (mandatory if we want to make a real Greek brioche – tsoureki)
• 3 g mastic (mandatory if we want to make a real Greek brioche – tsoureki)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 g cardamom (optional)
• 4 eggs medium (50 g each) + 2 yolks (in total eggs should be 250 g)
• 5g salt

Mixture C

• 500g strong white flour
  flour with higher % of proteins (above 10%)
• 500g all-purpose white flour
• 100 g butter, chilled and cut in pieces

For topping

• 1 egg yolk diluted with a spoon of milk
• almond livers or granulated sugar or sesame

Picture and recipe by Periklis Giavasoglou, #homemadebyperigiavas

Recommended for reading (and trying):

How to prepare at home Sourdough

Bread with Sourdough, our home recipe

Chocolate cake in half an hour– fast and simple with no eggs and butter

Cheesy pies – fast and simple

sweet bread with sourdough