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Pretty, isn't it? It's the traditional Greek Easter bread tsoureki, using the little known spices mastic and mehlepe (you can see them both here) and usually garnished with red eggs. I've made tsoureki before (twice, actually), to a great acclaim from a number of Greeks, and it has become a regular feature at my Easter table.The recipe I've used on the previous occasions was an adapted from Paul Hollywood's book 100 Great Breads, and it (the adapted version, that is) worked just well. But as a kind friend had sent me a copy of Theodore Kyriakou's widely acclaimed book, The Real Greek at Home: Dishes from the Heart of the Greek Kitchen, then I decided to use another recipe for tsoureki instead. After all, Kyriakou is the Chef of the The Real Greek restaurant in London and hailed as the...

Andrew of SpittoonExtra is hosting this month's edition of Waiter there is something in my ..., and the theme is bread. In ideal circumstances, I would have wanted to make a proper Estonian leavened rye bread. However, as I only just returned from London on the wee hours of Monday morning, and was busy celebrating my birthday yesterday, I didn't have time to start the rye bread. Yet as I was still keen to make something local, I decided to adapt an old recipe for a simple local loaf bread, karask.Karask is a type of bread in Estonia and Finland that doesn't use yeast nor require leavening; instead, baking powder is used to raise the bread. Usually karask is made with barley flour (mine uses plain wheat flour), and a popular local version uses curd cheese to flavour and moisten the bread...