Greek Christmas Bread: My Christopsomo Recipe

Print the recipe here: https://www.dimitrasdishes.com/christopsomo-greek-christmas-bread/

The Dough:

2 cups (500ml) lukewarm water
1 and 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
6 cups (1kg) all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar, or less
1/3 cup light olive oil
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon anise seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground mahlepi
1 cup (100g) ground walnuts
1 cup raisins
1 star anise, finely ground
1/2 teaspoon salt
The Glaze:

2-3 tablespoons honey
1-2 tablespoons hot water
Instructions
Make the Dough:

In a large mixing bowl combine the all-purpose flour, salt, ground star anise, mahlepi, and anise seeds. Whisk together.

In the bowl of a tabletop mixer that has been fitted with the dough hook attachment, add the water, yeast, 1-2 tablespoons of the flour and 1/4 cup of the granulated sugar. Add the remaining 3/4 cup of sugar to the flour mixture. Whisk the yeast mixture together and let it rest so that the yeast activates. About 8 minutes. The yeast is fresh (active) if a foamy cloud forms on top of the mixture.

Add the olive oil, honey, and vanilla extract along with flour mixture. Knead on low speed for 8 minutes. Add the raisins and ground walnuts and knead for an additional 2 minutes.

Lightly grease a large bowl with olive oil and transfer the dough into the bowl. Toss to coat and cover with a clean kitchen towel or with plastic wrap. Set aside to rise until doubled in volume. About 2 hours.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and pinch off about 250-300grams of dough. Set that aside. It will be used to decorate the top of the bread.

Transfer the remaining dough into a 10-inch round (at least 3-inch deep) baking pan lined with parchment paper. Grease the pan before adding the dough.

Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 20-30 minutes.

Cut the reserved dough into 2 portions. One should be bigger than the other. Divide the bigger piece into 4 equal pieces. Roll each portion out into a 12-inch long rope. twist 2 ropes together and do the same with the other two.

Roll the smaller portion of dough into a flat disc. Cut out 12 leaves and set aside.

Place the 2 twisted ropes on top of the bread to form a cross.

Place 3 leaves in each quarter. Cover with plastic and set aside to rise for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 °F, 180 °C.

In a small bowl combine the honey and water and whisk together.

Brush the top of the dough generously with the honey mixture.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and brush with the remaining honey mixture. Loosely cover with foil. Cut a small slit on top of the foil and return the pan to the center rack of the oven. Bake for 30-45 minutes longer. The internal temperature should read 200 °F.

Allow the bread to cool completely. Transfer to a serving platter and enjoy. Kali Orexi!

Music Used:
Greek Sun Time (With Intro)
ITEM ID: 66582698
By: tonyanthony

Its All Greek
ITEM ID: 84456733
By: LowNotes

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Hi everyone Yas to another episode of dimitra’s dishes today I’m going to teach you how to make Christo SoMo also known as Christmas bread so this is a Christmas bread that’s made traditionally either on New Year’s Eve or the day before New Year’s Eve in most Greek households it’s so delicious it’s

Sweet but not too sweet even though I make mine much sweeter than traditional recipes do I just like it a little more sweeter and it has the warm flavors of star anise and anise seed it’s just so good some people like to put cinnamon in

It let’s get started in the bowl of a tabletop mixer that’s fitted with the dough hook attachment I’m going to go ahead and add 2 cups or 500 mL of lukewarm water 1 and 1/2 tablespoon of instant active dry yeast and then a whole cup of sugar is going in the

Mixture but I’m only going to add a little bit of it to the yeast mixture so it can help it activate and the rest is going to go into the flour mixture and I’m also going to take a little bit of the flour mixture and and put it in the

Yeast that’s also going to help it activate leave the yeast aside for about 8 minutes or so just to make sure that it’s alive so that way it helps the bread rise you’ll know that the yeast is good once a little like foamy mixture foamy Cloud forms at the top just set

That aside and in the meantime get the rest of the ingredients ready in my bowl over here I have about 5 to six cups or 800 G of allpurpose flour I’m going to pulse a staranise these are all kind of broken so I’m just going to use two of

Them and I’m going to put them in my little mixer over here and pulse it until it’s really finely ground if you could get it to a powder that’s really good if you have a coffee grinder that’ll grind it really well but I don’t have one I have this a mortar and pestel

Will work too and then go ahead and add the ground up anise to your flour mixture next I’m also going to add 1 tbspoon of anise seeds and a half a teaspoon of salt I’m also going to add half a teaspoon of ground up m YY next I

Have 1 cup or 100 G of walnuts that I’m going to grind up in my food processor over here just get them roughly chopped in there you don’t have to get them into a powder and then I’m going to add them to a bowl along with a cup of raisins

You could leave the raisins out but they add really nice sweetness I’m using dark raisins but golden raisins would be perfect for this once this is all done the yeast should be activated and now I’m going to add A3 of a cup of light olive oil to my mixture a teaspoon of

Pure vanilla extract and 1/4 of a cup of honey if you add the olive oil to your mixing cup first the honey just slides out if you do the honey first it’s just going to get stuck to your little mixing cup so definitely add the olive oil

First then I’m going to start adding some of the dry mixture which is this flour mixture to The Mixing Bowl and I’m going to start mixing it or kneading it on low speed and then all of the flour is going to slowly get added to this and

I’m going to let this knead for about 8 minutes on low speed if it’s looking really really sticky and mine was very sticky I’m going to go in and add one more cup of allpurpose flour and then in the last two minutes of kneading I’m going to add the ground walnuts and the

Raisins and let it knead for another 2 minutes once it’s all done it’s still going to be a little bit sticky but once you grease the bowl that it’s going to go in and you toss the dough into the bowl it’s going to the stickiness should

Go away and it should be tacky cover your bowl with plastic wrap or with a clean kitchen towel and set it aside on the the warmest part of your house so it can double in volume that’s going to take about an hour and a half to 2 hours

Cuz it is a very rich and heavy dough so I’m baking my Christmas bread in a 10in round baking pan you want to make sure that it’s pretty deep at least 3 in deep because the cake is going to rise a lot go ahead and grease it with some olive

Oil or with some baking spray and place a round parchment paper on the bottom and make sure that you grease that well too set that aside and then once the dough has risen go ahead and transfer it onto a very lightly flowed work surface and then you’re going to take a portion

Of the dough out about 250 g a kitchen scale comes in handy at this point but this is about the size that you’re looking for because we’re going to use this for the decorations then you’re going to go ahead and just roll it out a little bit roll out the bigger portion

Of dough into a ball and place it into the prepared baking pan cover it with plastic wrap and just set it aside for about 20 minutes so it can begin to rise while you prepare the decorations keep in in mind that the more you work with

Dough the harder it is for it to roll out you’re going to notice that once you’ve worked with it the and you start rolling it out or if it’s a little bit cold while you’re rolling it’ll start to contract on you so you’re going to we’re

Going to first cut it into two portions one portion needs to be bigger than the other because we’re going to use one portion to make the cross for this and we’re going to cut that bigger portion into four portions because we’re going to make four ropes out of this if you

Want to you can make make two braids out of it it’s just going to be a little bit harder cuz it’s not enough dough you can definitely take a bigger portion of dough more than 250 g to make two braids for this but I’m going to roll each of

These four little portions out into ropes and you want them to be a little bit bigger than 12 in because again they are going to contract a little bit and they’re going to go over each other and the pan since it’s 10 in you want the

Ropes to be long enough so that way they make a beautiful decoration on top if they’re Contracting on you just go ahead and roll them as much as you can into ropes and then cover them with a clean kitchen towel and after about 5 minutes you’re going to see how much easier it’s

Going to be to roll them out like I said roll them out into ropes then you’re going to take two and connect them at the top and just twist them just the way I’m doing and set them aside then I’m going to take this other small piece of

Dough that I have here and I’m just going to roll it out into just a flat little disc and I have this little leaf pie cutter I use these Cutters to make cookies and they’re just beautiful you can you don’t have to do leaves you can

Do whatever you want and if you don’t have a pie cutter you can just use a knife to cut out little leaf shapes if you have snowflake cookie cutters those would be really pretty as well and festive go ahead and cut out about if you’re using leaves like I am I’m going

To use 12 leaves so I’m just going to cut these out and it does have a little stamp too so I’ll stamp each one and put them on a lightly flowed surface take your bread out it should have risen a little bit and in a bowl I’ve combined 2

To 3 tablespoons of Honey with about 1 to 2 tablespoons of really hot water mix that together this is going to create a beautiful glaze and it’s going to add some sweetness to the top brush that honey over the top of the bread and then you’re going to put your decorations on

Top I’m just going to take these twisty ropes and I’m going to make an X or a cross with them and then I’m going to take the leaves and put three in each section just because that looks really pretty I’m going to brush everything with some more honey and I’m going to

Cover it with plastic wrap and set it aside to rise for about 30 minutes or so I like to put it in a really warm place so it gets nice and puffy the more it rises the lighter the bread is going to be all right so your oven should be

Preheated to 350° fah that’s 180° C this is going to bake uncovered for the first 30 minutes and you’re going to see that it’s going to get beautiful golden brown if you were to cook it the whole time uncovered and I’ve done that before it’s going to get too Brown and it’s almost

Going to look burnt it won’t be burnt but it’s not going to look so pretty so after 30 minutes take it out of the oven and brush it with the remaining honey that’s left over that honey water syrup use all of it to brush it all around

That’s going to help it get more color and really nice flavor then Loosely put the foil on top of it and I also cut a little slit in the foil just to let that steam Escape you don’t want the top to get soggy put it back in the oven for

About 30 to 35 minutes if you have um instant read thermometer It should read between 200° F to maybe 210 maximum that’s how you know it’s fully cooked take it out run a knife around the edges to release the bread from the pan and

Then let it cool in the pan for a good 20 30 minutes so it can come to room temperature then go ahead and take it out of the pan and let it completely cool maybe on a cooling rack or on your cutting board or just on a clean surface

You don’t want to cut into this until it’s completely cooled otherwise it’s going to be doughy on the inside once you cut into this it’s going to smell incredible you’re just going to see the beautiful layers of bread in there it’s going to be so beautiful it’s going to

Smell good it’s just such a beautiful and aromatic bread again I make it a little more sweet than the traditional recipes call for most recipes have maybe a/4 of a cup of honey and a couple of tablespoons of sugar in the whole bread so if you want it more traditional just

Cut the Sugar by a lot not even not even half but if you want a little sweeter like T then you can go by my recipe once you bite into this it tastes like heaven time for the taste test oh my goodness it’s so soft it really is delightful turki has

Much more mppi in it and it really tastes like turki this does not taste so much like turki it’s totally different you do taste the MPI in the background and you have that anise flavor which is almost like a liquor is but not as strong as a licorice the anise seeds are

Also really nice in there I love raisins so I did put the raisins in there you could leave the raisins out and the walnuts out if you don’t like them and put your favorite fruit and nuts in here or leave it out completely even though it won’t be um so traditional if you

Leave the nuts out I did forget to mention that once I put the decorations on it is traditional to put a whole Walnut in its shell in the center I forgot to say that when I was doing the instructions but I did put that in there

And it baked the whole time it’s just a part of the decoration makes it really traditional looking I hope you guys give this recipe a try you can print it out on the website demitras dishes.com thank you so much for spending time with me today I’ll see you all next time yes s