Choreg

Choreg is a soft, sweet Armenian bread that we eat for dessert or breakfast or with appetizers. This recipe isn’t exactly like my great-grandmothers, but it’s close and it’s delicious.

5 cups flour

1 cup melted butter

1/3 cup sugar

3 eggs + 1 egg separated, beaten

2 packets of yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

sesame seeds for sprinkling over the top

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and set aside. Melt the butter and beat the 3 eggs. Mix together the flour, sugar and salt well. Add in the butter, 3 eggs, yeast mixture and milk and mix together. You can knead it right in the bowl just until the dough comes together and isn’t sticking to the sides of the bowl anymore. Clean the bowl, coat it with butter or oil and put the dough back in. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 2 hours.

Now it’s time to shape the dough. Take a key lime sized piece and roll it out with your hands into a long worm shape. Bend into a horseshoe shape and then braid the two sides. Place on a greased aluminum baking sheet. Do not use teflon, non-stick or any other dark bottom pan or they will burn on the bottom.

Let rise 30 more minutes. Brush with beaten egg and top with sesame seeds. Bake in a 375 F oven for 13 minutes. Take out and eat warm. If you’re not going to eat them all at once, you can freeze them and microwave them to heat them back up.

Sweet Hadjin Choreg

This is my great-grandmother Mary’s recipe for sweet choreg. They are also called gata. This kind has a sweet filling called koritz. There are also regular choreg and gata without the filling, but I prefer these. We eat them for breakfast or a midnight snack. Actually, they are so yummy we eat them all the time!

Koritz (filling):

1 lb. butter

3 cups flour

4 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup finely ground walnuts

1 cup sugar

For the dough:

1/2 lb. melted room temperature butter

1/2 cup crisco

1/2 cup warm water

2 packets yeast

2 1/2 lbs. flour

2 tsp. salt

1 cup + 1 Tbsp. sugar

12 oz. can evaporated milk

2 beaten eggs

First, make the koritz:

Melt the butter on the stove over medium-low heat. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring and stirring until it is well blended and looks almost like dough. Turn off the heat and add cinnamon, walnuts and sugar and stir stir stir until the sugar is totally dissolved and everything is blended very well. Set aside to cool.

Now you can make the dough:

First, melt the butter. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Mix the flour, sugar and salt together well. Cut the crisco into the flour with a pastry cutter or just by using your fingers.

Dissolve 1 Tbsp. sugar in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add the 2 packets of yeast to this and set aside to proof for 10 minutes.

Beat the 2 eggs. Add the eggs, melted butter, yeast mixture and evaporated milk to the flour mixture. Mix with your hands (it will be messy) until it comes together as a dough. Knead just until it is completely blended. You can do all this right in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for at least 2 hours.

Now it’s time to roll them out! Divide the dough into 5 equal sized portions. Divide the koritz into 5 portions. Take 1 portion of dough and roll out into a square about 1/4″ thick. Spread 1 portion of the koritz all over it, pressing it into the dough with your hands lightly. Roll up into a tube like a jelly roll. Pinch and seal the edges with your fingers. Now gently flatten it out with a rolling pin, being careful not to let the kortiz ooze out. Cut on the diagonal into several rectangular pieces. Pierce each choreg with a fork in a couple places. Brush with beaten egg. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Repeat with each portion until you are done. Eat them hot out of the oven! Once they’ve cooled, you can microwave them for 15-20 seconds and they will taste fresh. They also freeze well if you want to save them.