When I was a very little girl, some parishioner of St. Paul's Episcopal Church provided egg braid bread, decorated with bright pink eggs, for the reception every year after the Easter service. It was one of those sticky childhood memories; I feel like I'll be able to picture the exact hue of the eggs on my death bed. So I did a little research to find out why we had that bread. I'm reasonably certain that it was a replication of Tsoureki, a Greek egg braid bread made to celebrate Easter. I thought I'd give it a go with the kiddos.
Ours was a little different than the bread of my youth. It had a lot of orange zest in it and a lot of slivered almonds on it.
And the eggs were dyed in beet dye, because who can resist beet dye?
The results were so-so, to be honest. The orange zest was great, but I must have kneaded it much too much - very hard bread. And the beet dye couldn't hold up to the heat of the oven. The bread around the eggs was a lovely ruby color, but the eggs themselves were rather faded.
I still liked it. I might try again next year, either with a different recipe or just much less kneading. And I should probably give up on the beet dye, but I like it. Why settle for unusual when you can be really weird, right?
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