Artos: Greek Celebration Bread

Greetings, bread fans!  This week, I'll be discussing the bread I baked for our Christmas feast.  My family usually prepares my great-grandmother's bread recipe, formed into rolls, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I did Granny's rolls for Thanksgiving, but by happy chance, I ended up with a celebration bread on the baking schedule right near Christmas, so I tried that instead.

My modestly successful attempt at a Christopsomos

This week's bread is artos.  It's a catch-all term for several different variations of Greek celebration breads prepared for different festivals.  It's an enriched dough that's prepared using milk, egg and spices.  Some variations also include fruits or nuts worked into the dough.  In traditional Greek households, the prepared bread is often taken to the local Orthodox church to be blessed before baking.  Sometimes, it's even stamped or sealed, and some holidays include hidden treasures like eggs or a gold coin.

The variant I prepared is called a Christopsomos loaf, which is the traditional Christmas bread.  It's decorated with a cross on top of the risen loaf.  Unfortunately, my attempt at decoration was only partially successful, as you can see.  Nevertheless, I'm quite pleased with the flavor and texture of the bread, so I'm calling this attempt a qualified success.

Like most of the recipes in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, the artos relies on a pre-ferment stage to bring out the flavor of the flour.  This particular recipe uses a poolish.  The flour-to-water ratio of the poolish is about 3:2 by volume, so the finished product is very liquid.  I prepared the poolish ahead of time.  Then, on Christmas morning, I pulled it out of the fridge to warm up and activate the yeast.  After about an hour, the yeasts went to work, and I got a really nice bubble going.

The activated poolish

Alongside the poolish, the dough includes milk and egg to create a delicate, rich bread.  It's also flavored with traditional, holiday aromatics like cinnamon, cloves, and orange zest.  After adding all the ingredients and finishing the mix, I discovered that the dough was extremely wet.  This is the second consecutive dough that's come out much looser than I expected, so I suspect that my flour storage is leaving the flour more aerated than usual, altering the flour-to-liquid ratio in my initial mix.  Jessica bought me a kitchen scale for Christmas, so I'll have to do some experimenting to see if that's indeed the case.

The finished dough after the first prove

After adding considerably more flour and working the dough for a good 10-15 minutes, I finally arrived at a smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky dough.  Then it was off for a long winter's nap 😉.  An enriched dough needs longer to prove than a typical loaf using commercial yeast, because the extra fat makes the dough softer and less springy.  Eventually, I got a nicely risen loaf, and the warmth generated by the metabolizing yeast must have activated some of the oils from the spices, because my kitchen smelled amazing by the time the dough was ready for shaping.

To make the Christopsomos loaf, I was supposed to add a bunch of nuts and dried fruit during the dough assembly.  Oops!  I forgot!  Still, I was excited to try my hand at a decorated loaf, so I followed the instructions to separate the proven dough into two pieces, one about twice the size of the other.  The small piece went into the fridge until the large piece rose into a finished boule.  Then, I rolled the small piece out into two long strands, separated the ends, and decorated the risen boule as shown.

The risen boule with decorative cross

At the decoration stage, it became apparent to me that I had overcompensated for the wet dough and added too much flour while I was working it.  The decoration strand didn't stick to itself the way it should've, so instead of tight spirals at the base of the loaf, I ended up with loose, dangling ends.  This is the part of the process that went least well.  Nevertheless, the finished loaf ended up looking okay, and it tasted amazing.  The aromatics in the dough make it taste exactly like Christmas.  It tastes similar to gingerbread, but the flavor is more subtle, and the yeasty taste—combined with the distinct lack of molasses—makes it just different enough to stand out.  It almost has a wonderfully soft crumb.  In short, it's about halfway between a regular white bread and a cake.  I love it, and I would definitely make this bread again.

The completed loaf, fresh out of the oven and glistening with butter

The recipe called for an optional glaze, but I was feeling lazy after my first glass of wine, and I decided to take a short cut and butter the top of the loaf instead.  It gave the bread a delicious, buttery flavor, even if it doesn't look quite as amazing once it's soaked into the crust as a real glaze would've.

The crumb.  Notice the different structure in the decoration
strand, top right.

This bread has been delicious.  It's reminiscent of the cinnamon-raisin bread my grandmother used to keep when I was a kid.  As a result, I was expecting it to make great toast, but I was rather disappointed.  Most of the wonderful aromatics that give the bread its flavor got lost among the toasting.  It was good toast, but not as amazing as the bread itself.  Lesson learned.

Next week, I'll attempt that most difficult of New York traditions: the bagel.  Wish me luck, everyone.

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