This One's a Keeper

We are big fans of anything Mediterranean- gyros, feta, olives, Greek salad, baklava, tzatziki sauce, .. I could go on and on. So, no big surprise, we love, love, love the the Greek celebration bread! I am also a huge fan of dried fruit, so I was anxious to try one of the variations.

Here are a few of the changes I made to the formula:

1. I halved the poolish ingredients, except for the yeast, and it was just about perfect as far as how much I needed for the rest of the formula.

2. I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour and then used more yeast because of the whole wheat flour.

3. Went with vanilla extract since I didn't have any of the almond variety on hand.

4. Used fresh lemon zest, about two or three times the amount called for in the formula.

5. I divided the dough in half and mixed in the add-ins in just one of loaves (Drew doesn't like fruit in his bread!) I mixed in the following: walnuts (not toasted), dried cranberries, cherries, figs, and apricots.

6. I skipped the glaze.

When my husband, who loves to read about the Greek culture and food, etc, came down to look at the bread, he said, "Oh, well, the Greeks would have used goat's milk." We have some in the fridge and if I had known that before, I would have tried it! Maybe next time. So anyway, the bread turned out delicious!! And of course, I'm in love with the fruit variety. Turns out, Drew even likes the loaf with the fruit. It is seriously yummy, and smells even better, with a very lemony scent. Here's a couple snaps. Oh, and I didn't really love it right out of the oven, but it got better and better as the weekend progressed! We enjoyed some of the plain loaf with turkey chili and spider cupcakes for Halloween!

Smells like Christmas

There are many things I love about being Dutch...the cheese, Wilhelmina peppermints, stroopwafels, the cheese, windmills, strong coffee, the cheese. However, much to the chagrin of my ancestry, my palate doesn't like things that are almond flavored. Many Dutch pastries and desserts have that hint of almond extract that I just don't enjoy. So, when I read the recipe for Greek Celebration Bread and it asked for almond extract, I wasn't too excited. Additionally, many of my friends may also know that I don't like lemon flavoring. Nothing ruins a great cheesecake or white cake like the taste of lemon. Strange thing is I love lemonade, hmm.

Anyway, enough about the Dutch, let's talk about Greece. Going into this recipe this bread had two strikes against it, lemon and almond flavoring. I decided to be bold and change up the recipe a little. I added about 1/2 the amount of zest, and I used orange zest because I had some oranges on hand. Then I added 1 teaspoon vanilla extract rather than 1 teaspoon almond extract. Since the recipe called for only 1 cup of poolish, I made just a half of a recipe of the poolish and it came out to just about right. I made the poolish on Wednesday, and the rest of the bread on Friday. It made my house smell so good. Mmmm...cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg that's a recipe for Christmas right there. Rachel's huge boule kinda freaked me out, so I decided to make two smaller ones. Figured our family couldn't finish one whole boule before it went bad.

So here I was on Saturday with two boules, what to do? I made some good old fashioned French Toast. It's a sturdier bread so it was able to withstand the soaking and griddling just fine. I am not sure how it would taste if I had added the almond extract but we thought it worked really well.

In case you want to make some French Toast with your loaf, here is the recipe I used (I used only one of my boules so I cut this recipe in 1/2):
1/3 c. flour
2 T sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups milk or half and half
1 tsp. vanilla
6 eggs
18 slices of bread cut about 1-inch thick
Mix first 7 ingredients together. Dip each slice into egg mixture, turning to coat. Cook each slice on a slightly greased griddle or skillet for about 2-3 minutes per side.



Top with some butter, syrup, and powdered sugar and you have a winner!!
(I just read BG's comments on Kendra's post...great minds think alike!)