Greece’s Most Iconic Bread – Easter Tsoureki

Get ready to bake Tsoureki—the sweet, aromatic braided bread that’s at the heart of every Greek Orthodox Easter celebration! In this video, I’ll show you how to make tsoureki from scratch, step-by-step, using traditional ingredients like mahlepi, mastic, and orange zest for that classic flavor and irresistible texture. But it’s more than just a recipe—I’m also sharing all the beautiful traditions of Greek Orthodox Easter, from Holy Week customs to Easter Sunday!

Find the printable recipe here: https://www.bakeacrosseurope.com/2025/04/17/greek-easter-bread-tsoureki/

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[Music] With Easter right around the corner, I thought I’d share with you a recipe from a country that knows how to do Easter. We’re going to be traveling to Greece in our baking today with Greek Sereki. This is a sweet brios Easter bread that is flavored with two very unique spices that I will tell you more about in the video. So, let’s get into the video as I share with you how to make this as well as all of the Greek Easter traditions that go with it. So, let’s get started. [Music] We’re going to begin by blooming the yeast by mixing 175 ml or 3/4 of a cup of lukewarm milk with 11 g of instant yeast and a sprinkle of some of the sugar you’ll be using in the recipe. Mix it together and let it sit until the yeast bubbles up on the surface. This will take about 10 minutes. While the yeast is blooming, you can whisk together the dry ingredients. Combine 600 gram or 5 cups of bread flour with 50 gram or 1/4 cup of sugar, the zest of one orange, a half a teaspoon of salt, and two very unique spices, 1/4 teaspoon of ground mastic, and 1 tbsp of malpi. Mastic is the resin of the mastiff tree, and in many of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, it’s used as a spice for foods as well as a gum to chew. Maleppy or Malp as it’s known in Middle Eastern countries is the inner kernel of the pit of the St. Lucy cherry. It has a very similar flavor to bitter almond. Both of these spices are very key to the flavor of turki. So I definitely recommend picking some up for this recipe. I’ve linked below the Amazon links for the ones that I bought. You may be able to find them though at a local Mediterranean or Middle Eastern supplier if you have something like that near you. Now, you’re going to add all of those dry ingredients that you mixed together to the bowl of your stand mixer, or you can do this by hand if you don’t have a mixer. Um, and then you’re going to add in the bloomed yeast mixture and 2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 150 g of honey or a half a cup. and also two eggs. Then you’re going to combine all of the ingredients on low until they come together. And once the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, you’re going to start adding in 150 g or 11 tablespoon of very soft unsalted butter. And you’re going to add it in about a half to 1 tbsp at a time. And don’t add in the next addition until the previous addition has been fully incorporated into the dough. Once you’ve added all of the butter, knead the dough on speed two on the KitchenAid for 10 to 15 minutes or until it can pass the window pane test. So, if we’re going to make sarki, then let’s learn a little bit about the traditions and the Easter celebrations that go along with it. Let’s talk a little bit about Greek Orthodox Easter while the dough continues to mix. Really the festivities begin 40 days before Easter when what the Orthodox Christians do is called the great fast. Um in the Western church it’s called Lent. And this is a time of sacrifice and fasting in preparation for the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. And this is to mimic Jesus’s 40 days of fasting in the desert. Well, the Orthodox Christians to this day eat a mostly vegan diet during the great fast. They give up meat, eggs, dairy, oil, wine on some days. And so really, they’re eating mostly vegetables, beans, things like that during this time. And so by the time Holy Week comes around, which is the week preceding Easter, then people are so tired of not having these foods. So the preparations for the food on Easter Sunday start to be again during the Holy Week, but they’re still fasting. They’re just preparing the foods. All of Holy Week has all of its different festivities that go with it. On Great Thursday, as it’s called Holy Thursday in the Western church, in the Eastern Church, it’s called Great Thursday. In the morning, they all go to divine liturgy and celebrate the commemoration of Jesus’s last supper. And then in the evening, they’re back in church and the passion of Christ is read. And that’s the reading of the crucifixion. Then back to church it is in the morning. And during that time, Jesus is taken down from the cross by the priest and he’s brought behind the iconostasis and then emerges the priest again, but instead with the body of Christ, he has a shroud which is representative of Christ’s body that is going to be laid in the tomb. And so in Greece, they make what’s called epitaps there. It’s like a ceremonial coffin. It’s decorated by the women of the church with flowers and decorations and this shroud that represents the body of Christ is laid inside the epitap. And then later that evening the towns and cities of Greece they all the churches from the areas they will process around like a funeral procession with the epitap containing the shroud. Now in Western Christianity, Holy Saturday is a time of mourning and waiting for the resurrection of Christ. Christ is still in the tomb on Holy Saturday. Well, Great Saturday, as it’s called in the Orthodox church, is viewed a little bit differently than in the Western church. It’s more of a time of celebration. It’s called the first resurrection. And this is the day that the Greek Orthodox celebrate that Jesus went down into Hades and he got the souls that had been waiting for him, the souls of Adam and Eve and Moses and the great prophets. And so that was considered the first resurrection. And so this day is not really a day of mourning. It’s starting to become more of a celebratory attitude. And then that evening, the Greeks fill the churches again in expectation for Easter. And as midnight approaches, people spill out of the churches into the town squares. And in many towns, as the clock strikes midnight, then fireworks are lit off. And these celebrations begin and people start greeting each other with Christos anest althos anest. And that means Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. So from the churches they bring the holy fire. And this is a fire that has traveled all the way from the churches of Jerusalem to the churches of Greece. And the people bring home a candle with the holy fire. And they bless their homes as they enter it. Then the feasting begins. People pass out red eggs to each other. They exchange them. And as they exchange them, they play a little game. They hit the eggs together. And if your egg does not break, that means you will be blessed in the coming year. Then that evening they have as much meat and dairy and eggs as they can fit in. Usually it’s a soup made from lamb intrails along with other side dishes filled with meat and dairy and eggs. And then also you can’t forget the sereki. People start enjoying pieces of sari. Then on Easter day the festivities continue. People are roasting lambs on spits in their backyards and the foods abound on that day and they people dance and drink and sing and they celebrate the hope that has come with the resurrection of Christ. So now that we’ve learned a little bit about Sari and the festivities surrounding it, let’s get back to our dough and see how it’s turned out. So, now that the dough has had time to knead for about 10 to 15 minutes, this is what it should look like. And you can see here it’s passing the window pane test, which is where it can stretch and not break, and you can see light through it. Form the dough into a ball and place it into an oiled bowl. Turn it over once so that all the sides are covered in oil. And then you’re going to cover the top and place it in a warm place to rise until it’s doubled in size. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen, this could take anywhere between one and two hours just because this is a really enriched [Music] dough. Once it’s risen, punch it down and then divide it in half. You can either eyeball it or weigh the dough and divide the number of g by two. That number will be the weight of each surki because this recipe makes two. [Music] You can also choose to make one big one the size of a baking sheet. And so you wouldn’t divide it in half here if you plan to do that. Now, you’re going to divide each piece of dough into three equal pieces. And you will be rolling out each of these pieces into ropes to braid. But before you do that, we want to roll and fold the dough several times to achieve Saraki’s classic texture, which has long stringy pieces in the finished bread. And for each piece, you’re going to roll it out until it’s really long. And then fold it in half and roll it again. And I found that by the third time, the dough was too resistant to be rolled out again. So, you’re just going to set that aside and do that for each piece. And then cover them and let them rest for 10 to 15 minutes. This will allow the gluten to relax enough for the final shaping. If you’ve enjoyed this video so far and have learned something, I invite you to hit the like button below and also to subscribe if you haven’t done so already. I make videos showcasing a European dessert or baked good and the history and traditions that go along with it. So, if that’s something that interests you, I hope you’ll stick around for more videos like this one. Now, once they’ve rested, you’re going to uncover three pieces at a time. If you’re making the two separate sori, you’re going to roll out each piece until it’s about 12 to 15 in long. And then on your baking tray, you’re going to braid them like a classic braid. Once you get to each end, you’re going to tuck the ends under the braid and you’re going to place it on one side of the parchment lined baking sheet and then repeat the same process for the second seri. If you do decide to make one big sereki instead of two, you’ll want to place it in the opposite direction on the baking sheet. And another option is also to meet the ends together to make a wreath instead of a long vertical bread. Cover the turki and then let them rise for about 30 minutes. You don’t want this doubling in size this time, just a bit puffed up before baking. It’s very common in grease to bake one or two red Easter eggs into the bread for decoration. So, if you want to do this, wad up a piece of parchment paper the size of an egg and place it nestled into the braid before letting it rise. And you’re going to bake it with the parchment in it and then remove it after baking. Then in that hole that the parchment paper was in, you can place an Easter egg in that little spot that was created from the parchment paper. And some people bake the eggs with the bread, but this will often lead to the color of the egg bleeding onto the bread. So I recommend the parchment paper method instead. Before baking it, brush it with an egg wash made from one beaten egg with half an eggshell of milk. And then sprinkle sliced almonds on the bread. Or you could also use sesame seeds. Some people use sesame instead of almonds. Now bake that in a 375° Fahrenheit, 190° C preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. And I recommend letting this cool completely on a rack before slicing into it. And if you have time, let it sit for a day before serving because that will help intensify the flavor of the spices in the bread. [Music] I’m looking forward to trying this. I have never tried those spices before. So, let’s dig in. It’s beautiful. Look how that pulls apart. I can see what they mean by like the stringy quality of the bread from rolling it and folding it a few times. That’s really nice. Let’s see what it tastes like. I really like that. I’d say my first reaction is that the flavor I taste is almond, which I’m guessing is from the malpi because that’s supposed to almost mimic the taste of bitter almond. Um, and then I do taste the mastic in there. It’s very subtle and it’s almost like a flavor you can’t place. And if you didn’t know it was in there, you would just think, hm, that’s a really unique flavor. I wonder what that is. I’d say it’s like an earthy bitter flavor, but the bread doesn’t taste bitter because it’s um it’s a sweet bread. It has sugar and honey in it, but it’s just a unique earthy flavor that you almost can’t put your finger on. The texture of this bread is amazing. Look how it just pulls apart. It’s so soft and it’s like a combination of cake- like and breadlike, which is really unique. You almost get a little bit more of that stringy texture to it if you pull the bread apart rather than slice it. But um it is definitely more convenient for serving if you serve it in slices. But I definitely recommend trying this. And how fun would it be to go to Greece someday for Easter and see all the festivities and try all of their foods? They certainly know how to throw a party, don’t they? That would be really fun to see in person. And if you want another Greek dessert, I highly recommend trying my Greek raani. That is a simolina cake that is soaked in a sugar syrup and it would be delicious to add to an Easter spread. So watch that video next and I will see you next time. [Music]