Koulouri Thesalonikis

The recipe I’m going to cook today, I found, a couple of years ago, on a site called “sintages apo spiti”. If what I’m saying seems Greek to you, it’s because it is Greek. It means homemade recipes or (in another meaning) well mannered recipes.

Today we are cooking what in Greece we call “Koulouri Thessalonikis”. It is a kind of bread that  we traditionally eat for breakfast and it is supposed to be originally made in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second biggest city.

The ingredients we’re gonna need are

• 400- 500 grams of general purpose flour
• 1 package of dry yeast (8-9 grams)
• 2 x ½ cup of warm water
• 50 grams of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 100 ml oil (I prefer olive oil but you can use vegetable oil as well)
• Sesame seeds

First we need a small bowl in which to put the first ½ cup of warm water, together with the yeast. We stir the yeast so as to dissolve it in the water and then put 2-3 tablespoons of flour in, and stir again. Put a paper towel over the bowl and leave it be for 10 minutes.

While waiting we choose a bigger bowl and we measure in the 400 grams of flour, the 50 grams of sugar and the tablespoon of salt. We mix them together a bit and wait for the yeast.

   After the 10 minutes , the yeast mixture must have bubbles on the surface and a kind of sour smell. We put it in the flour mix, add the water and the oil and start kneading until we have a soft dough that doesn’t stick to your hands. Depending on the flour you use, you might need a couple of extra tablespoons of flour so keep it close.

When the dough is the way we want it, we leave it to rise for half an hour.

Now that our dough has risen it might stick a bit to our hands again so we can put a bit of flour on its top to help us handle it better.

Before starting this final step, we must do a couple of things. Turn on the oven at 200 celsius (392 fahrenheit), place on your table or counter a cup of water with a silicone brush in it and finally a plate or bowl or what suits you better with the sesame seeds.

We take the dough and divide it in 10-12 parts, depending on the size that you want the breads to be, mind you they will rise again while baking.

Now we take each ball and make it a long (or short if you prefer) string and put it aside. We water them so that the sesame will stick on, pass them through the seeds, close them into circles and put them on our baking pan.

It is preferable to have lined the pan with non-stick baking paper.

   When everything is in the pan, we bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on the oven) until they have a light brown shade.

You take them out and place them on a rack to cool off. The little breads remain soft 2-3 days inside a plastic bag. If you want you can do as I do, double the recipe and after they are completely cool put them in small plastic bags in pairs or something and then in the freezer.

I take one bag out of the freezer and into the refrigerator overnight and in the morning put them in my husband’s lunch bag. They are almost as good as the fresh ones.