Recently, I was asked to make 3 huge batches of my Paska for a screen test for a local TV show. I was so confused at what I was thinking – it was such a great opportunity, and I love to turn people on to Paska – it’s *glorious* stuff – but I had already planned to not have to make Paska this year. It’s too great a temptation for me – last year, I went off gluten free when I made it and lived to sort of regret it. (The pain was awful, but the bread was kinda worth it – it’s THAT good!). I really didn’t want to go flying off the gluten free wagon, especially with my health doing so well lately. I’m strong, but some temptations are too great, even for me. I know myself well, so I decided to create a gluten free version.

Sure, I’d never made a gluten free bread before this point (and this was before my recent Gluten Free Deep Dish Pizza epiphany.)… but you know, I love a challenge.

Oh lord. This was amazing. It didn’t have quite the same texture as the real deal, but the flavor was there. I slathered butter on a slice fresh out of the oven, and it was heavenly. So good, in fact, that I immediately messaged local friend Alissa, of “The Accidental Celiac, to inform her that I am a GENIUS (and so humble!), and that if she was around, I had to bring her something. There may have been some capitalized expletives and exclamation point abuse involved also.

I wrapped some still-hot goodness up, stepped away from preparing supper, and went the few short blocks to deliver it. Yep, fresh out of the oven Paska is THAT urgent… especially because having access to safe, GOOD bread when gluten free can make you sort of… feral.

Says Alissa:

“GF Paska, I dub thee “Magic Bread.” My daughter already has had 2 servings..and a part of the braid on top. It was so yummy…and the scent was heavenly. Nice and lemony…mmmmm THANKS for the surprise delivery!!!”

Anyway, the screen test ended up cancelled, but at least I got THIS out of it all. This morning I was reminded that I had not posted this recipe, though all of this went down just over a week ago!

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Paska Bread
(Adapted from my Full Gluten Paska Recipe)

1/4cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
2.5 tsp active dry yeast (1 packet)
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 eggs, beaten
Juice of 1/2 lemon and 1/2 orange
Zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup scalded milk, cooled
3 cups gluten free all-purpose flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
2 cups white rice flour
1 cup potato starch

1 egg yolks
2 tsp water

Stir sugar into warm water. Sprinkle yeast on top of sugar water, gently incorporate. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes, until bubbly.

In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, continue to cream until well incorporated and fluffy once more.

Add juices, zest, and salt to the mixture, mix until combined. Add scalded milk, continue to mix until well incorporated and smooth. Add 2 cups of gluten free all purpose flour, combine well. Add yeast mixture, mix until well incorporated.

If you have a dough hook attachment for your mixer, affix it now.

Slowly add remaining flours and starch until a good, coherent bread dough comes together. It should be sticky to the touch.

Put dough into a lightly greased bowl or pot, cover top with plastic wrap, and allow to rise in a warm area until doubled in size, about 1 1/2-2 hours.

Now here’s the fun part. Reserve about 1/3 of the dough for decorations, and divide remaining dough out among the pans you’ll be using (grease them first!). For reference, we used an 8″ round pyrex pot, and an 8″ square cake pan to bake one batch of this. Mine turned out fairly thin, next time I’ll probably use the whole amount in a 9″ round pan.

For the main body of your bread , you’ll want the dough to fill at least 1/2 of each baking pan. They’ll rise a bit more, but not like crazy. Cover loosely pans and reserved 1/3 dough loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise another 1 hour.

Once your rise time is up, use the reserved dough to make designs on the top of each loaf. Braids, twists, curls, crosses and rosettes are popular/traditional, but have fun with it. (Google can be a great source of design inspiration.) Toothpicks can be used to help secure designs in place until after baking. Cover loosely with plastic, allow to rise one last time, 30 minutes.

While your dough is rising, whisk together the remaining egg yolks and water to create an egg wash. This glaze will give your finished Paska a shiny, dark brown finish. Beautiful!

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Once final rise is finished, brush entire top of each loaf with egg wash. Bake loaves for 10 minutes. Without opening the oven door, lower the heat to 325°F and continue to bake for another 20-35 minutes, depending on how thick your bread is. (Mine took 25 minutes.

Cool Paska for 10-15 minutes (if you can handle the wait), then gently remove from pans and transfer to a wire rack or wooden cutting board to continue cooling. Cut into one of your warm loaves, slather with butter, and … don’t plan on going anywhere for awhile. It’s easy to plow through a ton of this, and it will give you a bread coma. SO WORTH IT. Like many GF breads, this is best served warm… but that’s true with the full gluten version as well.

In closing, my husband/photographer has something to share:

“In the photography business, anything between your light and your subject is a “lighting modifier”. Turbo is a lighting modifier. Rather helpful, isn’t she?”

As I mentioned in my “How to make Pysanky” blog post, my absolute favorite part of Easter – growing up – was Ukrainian Easter bread, called Paska. My grandmother’s neighbor would bake it every year and share it with us. After the egg hunt was over, I knew we’d be going to my grandmothers and this delicious, citrussy bread would be waiting for us. SO GOOD. It’s sweet, and almost like a cross between a cake and a bread, and she used to bake it in coffee cans. It’s traditionally served at Ukrainian Easter celebrations, and I think of it as a breakfast bread. The memories of that bread were so vivid, when that Pysanky post brought them up, that I decided to get the recipe from my grandmother. It’s always interesting when you’re trying to get a recipe through a game of telephone – especially when the first two passes are through old ladies As usual with my family, the recipe came as more of a formula – no instructions… and I adapted it a little (increased the flour, increased the zest, changed lard to butter, ditched the coffee can in favor of decorated style), figured out what the directions would be, and made it last night.

I had originally planned to make this as a blog entry only, pass the finished product off to my husband to share at work, and behave myself. Gluten allergy be damned, I dug into that sucker AS I was taking it out of the oven! Whatever fallout should happen as a result, it’ll be worth it!

I prefer this bread served warm, either fresh out of the oven or microwaved. It’s a very tender, moist bread, so be sure to keep it from drying out. Also, it makes a TON of bread, so be prepared to make some friends VERY happy. There seem to be some wildly different ideas of what Paska entails – many don’t have citrus, some have a frosting – but this is what I was raised on, and it won’t disappoint!

I’m thinking that this will make some AMAZING French toast this weekend. Oh yeah. With a little vanilla, orange zest, and a splash of OJ in the custard… MMMmmm…

Paska Bread
(Adapted from Mary Morin’s Recipe)

1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
2 packets active dry yeast (4.5 tsp)
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
8 eggs, beaten
Juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange
Zest of 1-2 lemons and 1-2 oranges
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups scalded milk, cooled
~12+ cups all purpose flour, divided
2 egg yolks
1 Tbsp water

Stir sugar into warm water. Sprinkle yeast on top of sugar water, gently incorporate. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes, until bubbly.

In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, continue to cream until well incorporated and fluffy once more.

Add juices, zest, and salt to the mixture, mix until combined. Add scalded milk, continue to mix until well incorporated and smooth. Add 4 cups of flour, combine well. Add yeast mixture, mix until well incorporated.

If you have a dough hook attachment for your mixer, affix it now.

Slowly add remaining flour until a good, coherent bread dough comes together. It should be only very slightly sticky to the touch – not super sticky, and not really DRY.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface, and knead for a few minutes. Dough should be smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky when it’s been kneaded enough.

Put dough into a lightly greased bowl or pot, cover top with plastic wrap, and allow to rise in a warm area until doubled in size, about 1 1/2-2 hours. Once doubled, beat down the middle of the dough and allow to rise another hour.

Now here’s the fun part. Reserve about 1/3 of the dough for decorations, and divide remaining dough out among the pans you’ll be using (grease them first!). For reference, we used a 9″ round pyrex pot, a large loaf pan, and 3 mini loaf pans to bake ONE batch of this. It makes a *LOT* of bread… this is a good thing!

For the main body of your breads, you’ll want the dough to fill about 1/3 of each baking pan – they’ll rise like crazy. Halfway full if you’re adventurous, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Cover loosely pans and reserved 1/3 dough loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise another 30 mins.

Once your 30 minutes are up, use the reserved dough to make designs on the top of each loaf. Braids, twists, curls, crosses and rosettes are popular/traditional, but have fun with it. (Google can be a great source of design inspiration.) Toothpicks can be used to help secure designs in place until after baking. Cover loosely with plastic, allow to rise one last time, 30 minutes.

While your dough is rising, whisk together the remaining egg yolks and water to create an egg wash. This glaze will give your finished Paska a shiny, dark brown finish. Beautiful!

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Once final rise is finished, brush entire top of each loaf with egg wash. Bake loaves for 10 minutes. Without opening the oven door, lower the heat to 325°F and continue to bake for another 40 minutes.

Cool Paska for 10-15 minutes (if you can handle the wait), then gently remove from pans and tranfer to a wire rack or wooden cutting board to continue cooling.

I recommend wrapping and hiding a loaf or two, before cutting into any of them. If you’re planning to bring them somewhere, or share with ANYONE, this step is kind of essential.

Cut into one of your warm loaves, slather with butter, and … don’t plan on going anywhere for awhile. It’s easy to plow through a ton of this, and it will give you a bread coma. SO WORTH IT.

This is even great the next day, reheated with butter. Yum.

PS: I am glad that I double checked Mary’s last name for this post. For some reason, I originally typed “Mallon” instead of “Morin”. Mary Mallon. Yes. How’s that for a food blog screw up? Typhoid Fever is the new Truffle Oil?

Though I’m actually Irish Canadian, my best childhood memories of Easter are decidedly Ukrainian flavored.

Manitoba is known for a huge population of Ukrainians. Huge! Excellent homemade perogies could be found anywhere… but I digress. My grandmother’s neighbor was Ukrainian, Easter meant that she’d bake up these wonderful citrussy breads – Paska – and share with us. Oh, they were amazing. My favorite part of Easter, I still remember those delicious breads.

Another favorite part of Easter back then was seeing the Ukrainian Easter eggs, which would show up in advertising, or on display, or whatever. I’d marvel at the intricate designs, the bright colors. Tons of beauty and talent, right there.

One year – I’m sure I was probably in grade 4 or 5 – my class went to the Ukrainian Cultural Center to learn how to make the eggs. We were given little tools to draw wax designs on our eggs – a little stick with a cone shaped well. We’d scoop some wax into the little well, use a candle to melt it, and draw our initial outlines on. We’d dye it, dry it, draw more wax on… lather, rinse, release. When we were done, we’d carefully hold our eggs up near the candle flame, to melt all of the wax we’d drawn on, to reveal all of the colors that we’d protected from subsequent dye baths.

Although none of our eggs looked anything like the gorgeous egg art displayed in the Center, it was a lot of fun. I’ve always loved learning new skills, and I’ve always loved learning about other cultures.

The other day, I was thinking about how much fun I’d had back then, and decided that I would try it again, with my husband. As we’re both sort of anti social, doing at at home was the most attractive option. As I didn’t own any Pysanky tools, I needed to either buy some, or some up with an alternate way to get the wax on the eggs. I briefly considered painting melted wax on with art brushes… but then thought of another way – CRAYONS!

So, last night we bought some crayons and eggs, and went to it. We had a BALL! It was so much fun, and definitely an interesting, fun alternative to our usual Tuesday night “date night”. Though our results were far from professional, they were definitely more interesting than your average “egg dyeing kit” results… and really easy! This is a fun craft for kids AND adults or all skill levels. Let me show you how we did it:

What you need

Newspaper
Napkins or paper towels. LOTS.
Egg Dyes and/or food coloring
Vinegar
Cups or bowls for dye
Spoons
Hard boiled eggs
Crayons
Candles, optional

How to make Pysanky, the easy way

- Cover your entire work surface with newspaper – preferably a few layers. Put a good stack of napkins at each seat – you will go through a ton of them!

- Mix up your egg dyes according to instructions. We actually used Americolor food coloring, guessing at the amount.

- If your dye instructions don’t include the addition of vinegar, I highly recommend adding some – about 1-2 Tbsp per dye cup. This results in much more vibrant colors on the finished eggs. If you’d prefer to do pastel colored Pysanky, then skip the vinegar!

- Add 1 spoon to each dye cup, and line them up on your work surface, progressing from light to dark. Our dyes were ordered: Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, Black.

If you have food coloring bottles, dye jars, or anything else, it can be helpful to place them in front of their respective dye cups – for identification.

- Decide on what you’re looking to design, and what colors you’re using.

- If you are using any white in your design, draw that part of it onto the egg with a crayon. Make sure that any lines or spaces that you want white are completely covered – you are using the wax to protect that part of the egg from subsequent dye baths! Once you are satisfied that all of your white is drawn on, dye your egg in the lightest color you’ll be using.

- If you are not using white in your design, dye your egg in the lightest color you are using.

- Allow your egg to sit in the dye for about 2 minutes, until the egg is the desired vibrancy. Use spoon to remove egg from dye, pat COMPLETELY dry with paper towels.

- When egg is completely dry, use your crayon to draw on the design for the color you just dyed. For instance, if your egg is now yellow, draw the yellow part of your design on with the crayon.

- Dye egg in the next lightest color you’re using. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here are a few progressions:

Once all of your eggs are fully designed and have gone through their final dye bath, dry them all off completely (this is very important). We placed ours in a mini muffin tin to rest:

Now here is where we diverge from tradition, and kind of live to regret it!

Traditionally, you use a candle to melt the wax off. However, in googling to see if I was COMPLETELY off the wall in wanting to use crayons, I came across a post from Martha Stewart that recommended using an oven to remove the wax. I was intrigued by the idea, and my husband definitely preferred that to using a candle, so we tried it.

The idea is to put your eggs in a 250F oven for 10 minutes, and then use a paper towel to gently rub off the wax, revealing your final design.

I don’t know if it was our dye (doubt it!) or the technique, but we found that the oven caused moisture droplets to appear, and ruin the dye job. Our darkest eggs were left with neon pink dots on it, almost looking like someone had splattered bleach on it.

The solution we figured out after our first batch turned out weird:

Use a mini muffin tin. Lay paper towels out over the impressions, and gently rest your eggs on top. Bake at 250F for only about 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, carefully blot away any moisture. If any wax is melted, gently rub it off AFTER removing the moisture droplets. Return to oven, bake another 3 minutes, repeat. Do this until all of the wax is removed.

Some of our finished eggs:

Here are the eggs pictured in the progressions above:

Also – of COURSE – we *had* to make a Klingon Easter Egg:

(@jenusellis had the cutest comment on our tweeted picture: “LOL Is that a Klingon egg amidst the other pretty ones? Easter FtlhW” Hahaha! ‘FthlW’!!! Love it! I have the *best* Twitter followers!)

Tips:

- You WILL break crayons. Have a lot on hand, and consider them disposable. The Dollar Store is your friend!

- Try to use a different color after each dye bath, so you can tell what you drew last time around, and which is new. Depending on the design, it CAN get confusing after a couple colors.

- You don’t NEED white, and you don’t NEED to end with your darkest color. Some of the prettiest designs don’t have one of those – or either of them. It can be very tempting to use every color, so try to break out of the habit!

- If you don’t *completely* cover a spot with wax, the next color of dye can/will seep in. If this happens, shrug if off and claim you meant to. It’s like… Easter Egg Patina finish. Yes. That’s what it is. You read it here first, I pioneered crayon Easter Egg Patina. Royalties, baby!

- Next time, I think we’ll be doing the traditional method of removing the wax. It’s slightly more labor intensive – and not as kid-friendly as the oven method – but I am sure it’ll produce a better final result. To do so, hold your finished-design, DRY egg up near your flame. Don’t let it touch the flame, or hold it OVER the flame – you don’t want it to smoke, as it may ruin your egg. Allow a small section of wax to melt, and gently rub it off with a paper towel. Repeat, until your whole egg is revealed!

- If you don’t have ankle biters around, this is a GREAT date night activity. Especially with booze. I tried to get #DrunkenPysankyMaking to trend on Twitter last night, to no avail. Regardless, it was fun, and highly recommended!

I recently obtained this recipe from my aunt, by way of my grandmother. My husband was professing his love for sauerkraut, and I recalled the sauerkraut balls that this aunt used to make around the holidays. I remembered them being really addictive little bread balls filled with sauerkraut and bacon, but couldn’t remember much past that – it had been 2 decades since I’d had one!

So, after a couple of calls, I received an email with the vague recipe. I *immediately* set about making a batch for my husband. Between the bread, kraut, and bacon, I think he was about to start foaming at the mouth if I didn’t get right on it!

Sauerkraut Balls (Pyrizhky?)

Dough:
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1 envelope yeast
4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream

Filling:
1 lb bacon, chopped
1 bag saurkraut (about 19 oz), drained
1 medium onion, chopped
Salt
Pepper

Melted butter

Prepare the dough:

Gently mix together warm water, sugar, and yeast. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix together flour and salt. Form a well in the middle, and pour oil, eggs, and sour cream into it. Mix

well, then add the yeasty water. Mix until everything is well incorporated, then knead lightly for 2 minutes. Place dough in

a large, greased bowl. Cover and allow to rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

As you are waiting for the dough to rise, prepare the filling:

Cook bacon & onions until bacon is almost cooked, but not crispy. Add saurkraut to the pan, cook and stir well until bacon fat is absorbed and everything is heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let cool.

Assemble the sauerkraut balls:

Roll dough out to an even 1/4″ thickness. Cut rounds that are between 3″-4″ in diameter.

On the center of each round, place a mound of about 1 Tbsp filling. Gather edges of the round and seal the filling in (like a drawstring bag). Roll around between your hands a bit to get a uniform spherical shape, and place on a lightly greased / sprayed baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough/filling, leaving at least 2″ between dough balls.

Loosely cover cookie sheets with plastic wrap, and allow to rise another hour.

Heat oven to 350F. Remove pastic wrap from cookie sheets, bake for 25 minutes, or until golden. Remove from oven and brush liberally with melted butter.

Great served hot, fresh out of the oven, cold, or even reheated. IF they last that long.

Recently, I was craving perogies something fierce. At the time, I settled for crappy store bought frozen perogies, but vowed to make a batch of homemade perogies soon.

Growing up, my grandmother used to make amazing perogies, and I’ve never forgotten that – most else pales in comparison! Of course, she was the first person I called when I decided to try my hand at making them. She graciously provided her recipe, as well as an endless rant of tips. LOL.

My husband had never tried homemade perogies, and I’d never actually made them before.. so it was an interesting experiment. Luckily, he was a huge help in the kitchen, and they actually whipped up a lot quicker than I thought they would! I had remembered them being an all-day kind of task, this was more like 2 hours, start to finish. This recipe may look involved, but it’s actually really easy. SO
good. Om Nom.. num.. yummmy!

Makes 4 or 5 dozen perogies – Enjoy!

Perogie Dough
2 eggs
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 cup oil
2 cups lukewarm, water
5-6 cups flour

Beat eggs, add salt, oil, beat until mixed together well. Add water, beat again.

Add 5 cups flour, adding more flour if sticky. Lightly knead until well incorporated and smooth. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest one hour. While waiting, work on filling!

Perogie Filling

3 lbs red potatoes, peeled and halved/quartered
1.5-2 lbs cheese, shredded *
1 lb bacon, optional*
1 lb saurkraut, well drained, optional*
1 lb cottage cheese, optional*
Finely chopped onion, optional*
Dill Weed, optional*

Boil potatoes until fork tender and ready to mash.

I like to use my KitchenAid to mash my potatoes, and it works doubly well for this. You can, however, always mash and mix by hand. Either way, mash potatoes until smooth, and mix in your choice of cheese and flavorings until well incorporated

*Ideas for fillings:

Traditional: 2 lbs sharp Cheddar cheese.

Onion, Bacon, and cheese: 1.5 lbs cheddar cheese of your choice, 1 lb crisp bacon (crumbled), chopped onion to taste.

Saurkraut: Add 1 lb (or more) saurkraut to your potatoes. Cheese is optional – up to you!

Cottage Cheese, Onion, and Dill: 1 lb cottage cheese (or more, whatever!), onion and dill weed to taste.

The beauty of perogies is that you can customize your fillings in SO many ways. Have fun with it!

Assembly

1. Roll out dough on floured counter top. Aim to get it pretty thin – 1/16th – 1/8″ of an inch or so. When you’re first starting out, a bit thicker is ok – you’ll just have a bit more dough to bite through to get to your yummy filling!

2. Cut dough with large glass or round cookie cutter – I like to use a glass that’s about 3″ in diameter.

3. Place 1 tbsp of filling in the center of each round:

4. Lightly brush the edges with water, which will act as a glue.

5. Pick 1 round up in your non-dominant hand, and use your good hand to fold the dough around the filling, sealing the edge from one side to the other. Make sure your perogies are sealed well,or they will explode when you cook them! Also, I like to flatten them out a little.

6. Have a large pot of water heated to a low boil. (Too rolling of a boil will rip your perogies apart!). Drop a few perogies in at a time – our pot can take about a dozen. Cook until all rise to the surface, then for 2-3 minutes longer:

7. Removed cooked perogies from water, lightly toss with melted butter. This will prevent them from sticking together.

8. Enjoy as-is, or fry them in butter, onions.. maybe with some Kielbasa sausage… serve with some sour cream.. YUM!

Theoretically, you can freeze these (individually on a cookie sheet, then bag them together when frozen).. but unless you make several batches (or don’t really like perogies!), they’ll never make
it to the freezer!

Grandma’s Note – Grandma is very adamant that this is time consuming (wasn’t really!), and that – rather than cutting the dough into rounds, taking the scraps, and re-rolling/cutting more – I should DEFINITELY use her technique. I didn’t. Sorry, gramma!

What she says you should do is this: Roll your dough out,and cut into 3″ strips. Cut those again into 3″ squares, place filling in the middle, and fold/seal them to make triangles. Yes, it would be quicker than the rounds – I just don’t have the big hatred for cutting rounds that she seems to!