Artos: Greek Celebration Bread

Over the last two days, I baked the second bread from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice book: Artos.

After the anadama bread, I was excited to try this second bread that I wouldn’t have ever tried under any other circumstances.  There were three versions of the bread in the book. Plain, if you can call something that includes nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and allspice plain. I chose the Christopsomos version which included dried fruit and nuts. I happened to have golden raisins, dried cranberries and walnuts in the correct quanties.

I ran into some time problems when I was making this bread. I started the poolish way to late at night, which meant that I had to set an alarm to get up in order to put it in the fridge at an appropriate time. The next day, when I was making the bread, I was squeezing it in between way too many things. The dough spent some time in the fridge in order to slow down the fermentation, (the little guy had a birthday party to go to) but all’s well that ends well, right? I also ran into the problem that the store I went to during one of the resting periods did not carry almond extract, which is called for. So, I had to choose between imitation almond extract and real vanilla extract. When you grated your own nutmeg, I think that real ingredients are only appropriate!

This bread was wonderful! Though I’m still sated from breakfast which, not surprisingly, involved a slice of the bread, I am tempted to have another piece. The bread made a gigantic loaf! Though, I wasn’t surprised because some of the other folks who are blogging about this experience said the same thing.

Like the anadama bread, I would have probably never tried this bread if not for the book or for the Pinch My Salt blog.