0 Povitica

I love making yeasted enriched breads. Even though most enriched breads are more bread than pastry, the fact that they are enriched with milk, eggs and butter makes them seem more like dessert. For this month's Daring Bakers' challenge hostess Jenni asked us to make povitica, an Eastern European dessert bread. It can also be known as potica, nutroll, kolachi, or strudia.

I went old school and put away my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The dough came together quickly and easily using a wooden spoon and a big mixing bowl. It was a sticky dough so I had to knead it for some time before it came together for the initial rise.

Then came the fun part - rolling and stretching. I covered my work surface with a large sheet of cheesecloth and started rolling out the dough with a rolling pin. The dough was really easy to work with and never stuck to the cheesecloth. When it got to about 18 x 18-inches, I lifted the dough off the cloth and started stretching it using the back of my hands and arms. The goal was to get it thin enough that I could read through it.


Dough so thin that I can read through it!

Jenni suggested that we try the traditional walnut filling, but I wanted to use poppy seeds. I used a poppy seed honey filling recipe that I normally use for filling hamentaschen. As you can see I didn't have enough filling to spread over all the edges, but it still turned out just fine. (In hindsight I should have spread the poppy seed filling thinner so that it covered more of the dough. The sliced loaf would have been prettier with evenly spaced layers of dough-filling-dough-filling. Oh well! Live and learn. )



Then I folded the rolled up poppy seed filled dough like a snake into my prepared loaf pan. For my other loaf, I spread the stretched dough with some apricot jam, a light sprinkle of finely ground almonds and some dried cranberries. I rolled it and then twisted the roll into the pan.



When the loaves came out of the oven I couldn't wait to slice into them. The smell was amazing. There really is nothing quite like the scent of freshly baked bread still hot from the oven. After patiently letting it cool in the pan for 30 minutes, I turned them out onto a wire rack.



They tasted as good as they looked. The dough had a hint of sweetness and was very moist. Both flavors were delicious, but my favorite one was the cranberry. Even though I am on a self-imposed low-carb diet, I had a slice a day until the cranberry loaf was all gone!



Who knew something so pretty would be so easy to make? A big thanks to Jenni for the recipe and please visit the Daring Kitchen for a slideshow of other bakers' poviticas.

The fine print:
The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

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