Gluten free fluffy and full of flavors sweet bread (tsoureki). A recipe I tried multiple times and in many ways to reach the perfect result!
Prepare the sourdough by dissolving the yeast in the warm milk and then add the sugar and sifted flour. It becomes a mush. Cover it with cling film wrap and leave it in a warm place for 1 hour. I preheated the oven to 50oC/120oF and I turned it off, when I put the sourdough in.
After 1 hour, add 100 g of Schär's bread flour Mix B sifted, mix it and leave for another 1 hour cover it with cling film wrap and leave it in a warm place to rise again.
Sift the rest of the flour into a bowl, add the baking powder, xanthan and sugar and mix them. Slowly add the flour mixture to the sourdough and mix/knead. Because it doesn't have a lot of liquid, it basically becomes a dry mixture like dissolved breadcrumbs, like coarse flour, as seen in the photo.
Put the eggs in a mixer to beat well. Then slowly add the flour and sugar mixture. About halfway through and while the dough is still relatively wet, add the aromatics. And continue to beat adding the flours.
When at some point our dough has become tight and our mixer can no longer beat with the whisk, then we change them with those for the dough and continue.
Continue kneading in the mixer by adding the flour mixture little by little and when it is finished, start and slowly add the cream, continuing the kneading. And finally add the melted but not hot butter. And we continue kneading for another 10 minutes, until it becomes a very nice elastic dough. Note that it sticks a little to our hands.
We let the dough to rest a bit. Around 20 minutes or so. (During this time, I washed all the dishes I had used so far. I preheated the oven to 50oC/120oF and turned it off.
Spread a little sunflower oil on the surface where we will work the strings for the bun. Divide our dough into 8 equal parts, 4 for each bun. To make it easy to work with and because the dough is sticky, we wet our hands with a little sunflower oil so that we can grip the dough and shape our laces more easily.
Note: Our dough is quite light and in order to be able to work with it, it needs very gentle movements. If you find it difficult to roll, try to form/press/open into a cord shape with your hands.
We make a braid with the 4 cords. This is where I got a bit confused as I only have boys and I didn't have a little girl to learn how to braid, so lucky those who have little girls and have learned how to braid their hair. (if you find it difficult do it with 3 strings).
As soon as we make the bun, we put it on the large baking tray of our oven, after having first spread it with a sheet of greaseproof paper. Place our second bun and cover it and leave it in a warm place or in preheated oven at 50oC/120oF for 1 hour. My new stove I got, has 2 pans, one shallow and one deep, so I put them in the shallow pan and covered them with the deep one. This made it a lot easier because that way they didn't get stuck somewhere. If you can, put glasses on the 4 edges of the pan, put another pan on top and cover them with kitchen towels all together.
After 1 hour, they will have doubled in size, or more. Take it out of the oven if you have it there and preheat it to 180°C / 350°F. Mix the egg yolk with 1 tbsp. milk and with a brush spread it gently on each bun. And decorate the top with almond flakes or sesame seeds.
Bake for approximately 35 minutes until well browned on top. Turned off oven and leave it for another 10 minutes. Let them cool well and then put them either in a zip bag or in a taper that closes well or in wrap film so that they can be kept soft and not dry out.
