Lazarakia

A traditional semi sweet bread that is handed out on Lazarus Saturday around Greece.

Ingredients

• 500 grams. wheat flour for making bread
• 1 sachet of yeast (9 grams.)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp anise crushed
• 1/4 tbsp. of crushed cinnamon
• 2 dashes of crushed cloves
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• For the eyes and nose
• Raisins and cloves

Directions

1. In a bowl add the yeast some water some sugar and a bit of flour mix well and set aside. This is our bread starter. After 10 ′, put in a bowl all the ingredients except the flour. Mix well with a spoon to dissolve the ingredients, add the activated yeast and mix.
2. Hold 1/2 cup. flour and the rest pour it stirring with the spoon in the ingredients. We do not put the flour all at once. We keep a little for the end of the dough. When the dough is gathered into a ball around the spoon, dip your hands in the flour we kept and knead until you have a soft and pliable dough that does not stick to the hands at all.
3. Put the dough for the lazaraki in an oiled bowl, cover it and let it double in size for 1 hour.
4. After puffing, take the dough out on the counter and knead it to deflate.
5. Divide the dough for lazaraki traditionally into 6 pieces.
6. We will create 6 lazarakia add the eyes and nose, add them to a pan that we have applied parchment paper and bake the lazarakia in a preheated oven, for about 20 minutes, on the heating elements, on the lower grill of the oven, at 180 ° C until they turn golden brown.