When the ladies of Akron’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church get together to bake, they don’t mess around.
The first ingredient in their traditional koulourakia cookies? Ten pounds of butter. And that’s just for the first batch of dough to make these golden gems that look like miniature loaves of woven bread.
“Every grandmother has them in their kitchen. Always,” said Zoe Bartz McClish, one of the ladies baking at the church. “The kids all know where the koulourakia are at the grandma’s house.”
For Greek families, a typical breakfast often includes dunking koulourakia into a cup of coffee and then enjoying a bite or two of salty feta cheese.
The ladies were expecting to make 12 batches of dough during two koulourakia-baking workshops scheduled for mid-August and early September. Each batch makes about 800 cookies. When you do the math, that’s a lot of sweet treats — nearly 10,000 of them.
The 2025 Annunciation Greek Festival will be held Sept. 18 to 20 at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 129 S. Union St. in University Park from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Volunteers participate in baking and cooking workshops to prepare for the Orthodox Christian parish’s annual Annunciation Greek Festival. When the festival started in 1958, the church hosted it in rented empty storefronts downtown — it eventually found its home in the church at 129 S. Union St. in University Park.
The festival has become an annual autumn tradition for many Akronites, and this year, it will run from Sept. 18 to 20.
Carrying on the traditions
Ladies from the parish arrive early to the church and spend all day in the kitchen and social hall during the workshops, making sweet and savory goodies, like baklava, spanakopita and other Greek foods.
While volunteers are accustomed to their own families’ version of these recipes, the process of creating each dish served at the festival is led by a pair of co-chairs who organize the workshops. Their role is to ensure the recipes are authentic, the ingredients are the very best and the finished products meet their high standards.
During the Aug. 19 koulourakia workshop, co-chairs Christina Manousos and Christine Salem spent most of their time in the kitchen in a cloud of flour and sugar, using the recipe of the late Jane Kaneas to make the cookie dough.
They measured ingredients and carefully poured them into an industrial mixer, stopping every now and then to scrape down the sides of the bowl and taking breaks to make sure the dough was the right texture.
In the social hall, McClish, Kathy Schlosser and other volunteers turned the balls of buttery dough into koulourakia. These cookies, Schlosser said, date back to the Minoan civilization in Greece. They are often served at Easter celebrations, but because they contain simple ingredients found in most kitchens, they’re baked and eaten all year long.
When the koulourakia dough was ready, it took both Manousos and Salem to lift the mixer bowl and pour the contents onto a clean table to form a cookie-dough mountain. Using scales, volunteers weighed the dough, shaped it into half-pound balls and placed each ball on a tray.
Koulourakia dough is mildly sweet and pliable enough to form into shapes. While some Greek families make their koulourakia in S-shapes, snail-shell twists or flowers, volunteers rolled the dough into a traditional twist shape for the Greek festival.
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The bakers left off the typical sprinkle of sesame seeds so people with nut allergies can enjoy them too.
Volunteer Maria Futules stood at the end of a table in the kitchen, quickly shaping the dough with one graceful motion, each cookie the perfect size. She’s had lots of experience. Growing up, her mother taught her how to make koulourakia, and now she bakes and sells them as a vendor at the Tallmadge Farmers Market.
Being the right-hand man
Once the trays were full, they were delivered to the social hall by George Koukies, a lifelong congregant, who said he has been helping at the festival since he was a child. Before he retired he would take a vacation week from work to help prepare and work at the event.
At the baking workshops, he serves as a runner, delivering trays of dough balls to the social hall and then returning sheet pans full of shaped koulourakia to the kitchen, ready for an egg wash before baking.
When the kitchen air turns sweet with vanilla, the koulourakia are removed from the oven. They are puffed up, golden and shiny, and ready to be stored in airtight containers until they can be served at the festival.
During the festival, Koukies can be found working the grill in the taverna tent, just outside the church building. He’s a pro at making gyros, chicken souvlaki sandwiches, lamb shanks and even rolling silverware in napkins.
“It’s a lot of work, but I always come back because I’m committed to it and it has to be done,” he said.
Introducing Akron to Greek heritage
Every year, guests at the festival can look forward to a feast for their senses. They can taste the Greek dishes and pastries, hear music performed by bands in the social hall and prayers chanted by clergy during a sanctuary tour. They can watch parish children wearing traditional costumes and performing cultural dances.
The festival food can be enjoyed inside the church’s social hall and outside in the taverna — it can also be ordered online for curbside pickup. (Can’t make this year’s festival? Check the church’s calendar for Gyro Thursdays most weeks from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) With decades of experience, festival workers have this down to a science; be sure to order early so your favorite items don’t sell out.
And no matter your background or culture, don’t be surprised to see your neighbors, co-workers and friends at the festival too, sitting alongside church members.
“Our ethnicity is also tied in very closely with our religion,” said Schlosser, who is co-chairing the church’s Easter Bake Sale in April. “The whole key about our people is tradition, and family is what keeps us going.”
She said the public is welcome to attend community events at the church, adding with a smile, “There’s Greeks, and those who wish they were Greeks.”
