Nº 7: Tsoureki (Plant-Based)

Sweet Greek Easter (or Lenten!) bread

Good morning,

I love the recipe that follows.

To arrive at it, I challenged myself to come up with a formula for an outstanding plant-based (vegan-friendly) tsoureki. (My recipe for traditional tsoureki with eggs, butter, and milk is here in today’s other post, along with some background about the sweet Greek Easter bread.)

Now, Greek Easter meals are usually centered around a spit-roasted lamb and other animal-derived ingredients. After all, the celebration follows forty days of Lent during which Greek Orthodox observers are meant to abstain from all products having anything to do with red-blooded animals. So feasting with a tsoureki that would in fact be permissible while “fasting” might seem anticlimactic to some. But to those who favor plant-based ingredients year-round, it’s anything but.

I won’t go into great detail here about how I landed on these plant-based ingredients and techniques, because I do so in an upcoming “Baking Remix” column for Kitchen Projects. You can consider this a sneak preview. I’ll just say that oats, olive oil, and cashews do some amazing work here, and this recipe is worth trying no matter what you think of dairy and eggs.

Best wishes,

Brian

TSOUREKI (PLANT-BASED, VEGAN-FRIENDLY)

Makes 2 braided loaves
Active time: 50 minutes | Baking time: 35 to 45 minutes | Total time: 3 1/2 hours to 5 1/2 hours

INGREDIENTS: