The Best Use For Nuts, Ever

All right, for all you folks who aren't blessed with Slovenian ancestors, Potica (pronounced poe-TEE-tsa) is the traditional Slovenian holiday nut-bread. It's sometimes made at Thanksgiving, generally at Christmas, but always at Easter, because it tastes so good with a sliver of smoked meat, say, Easter ham.

Tradition in our house was to take a plate of food to church Easter Sunday morning to be blessed. That dish always included: Dyed Easter eggs. A slice of the Easter ham. A scraped horseradish root (my Dad made his own, sinus-clearingly strong horse-radish every spring. Later, when I went off to college and attended my first Seder, I made the connection to the bitter herbs of the Jewish tradition, but I have no idea how it showed up in very Catholic Slovenia.) And of course, potica.

Potica takes more than a little time commitment, and a large flat surface to roll out the dough. My mother, who learned from my grandmother, would completely cover the dinner table with rolled dough. I'm not baking for a family of nine, so I halved the recipe and came up with something I can manage on my kitchen countertop, and bake nicely in a small squared baker.



Potica

Ingredients:

Dough
3/4 cups milk
1-1/4 tsp. instant yeast
2 T. sugar
1 T. flour
2 egg yolks (reserve whites for filling)
2 cups flour
1/4 cup butter
1-1/2 tsp. salt

Filling
1/4 cup cream
2 T. butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/2 lb. ground walnuts (recipes calling for bread/graham cracker crumbs in the filling are, of course, the work of the devil. Raisins even more so.)
2 egg whites
1/4 cup white sugar

1 egg, for eggwash

Scald milk (1-1/2 minutes in microwave will work) and cool to 110-115°. Mix together yeast, sugar and flour, and stir into milk. Let stand for 30 minutes, to get nice and foamy.

Separate 2 eggs (reserve whites for filling). Beat yolks and add to yeast mixture when 30 minutes are up.

Measure 2 cups flour; reserve 1/4 cup for kneading. Put the rest in a mixing bowl and cut in butter. Add salt. Stir in liquid mixture and knead to a very soft dough. (If using a stand mixer, add liquid to flour mixture and stir 5 minutes with dough hook, then add flour a tablespoon at a time until dough mostly pulls away from bowl--there'll be a spot two or three inches wide, stuck at the very bottom. Knead an additional 3 minutes on medium high.) Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let stand 6 hours, or overnight in the fridge.

The next day, take dough out of refrigerator and let stand at room temperature while you prepare the filling.

Grind 1/2 lb. of walnut meats in a crank grinder, or by pulsing in a food processor on high about 20 times. (The walnuts will look a bit like cornmeal.)

On the stove top over medium heat, melt cream, butter, brown sugar and honey and bring just to a boil. Stir in walnuts and remove from heat.

Whip egg whites until frothy, then add granulated sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold into the walnut mixture and let stand while you roll out dough.

On a floured rolling sheet, roll out the dough into an oblong, roughly 18 x 30". Using a spatula, spread with filling mixture right out to the edges, licking fingers liberally. Roll up dough, starting from the long side--all the recipes say "like for jelly roll," taking care to have the seam on the bottom when finished. Pinch ends closed.

Form into a loose spiral and transfer to a greased Off Center Ceramics small square baking dish (or nine inch square cake pan). Put in a warm place, cover with a cloth and let raise until light. (My Mom says it takes an hour. In my cool, damp kitchen, it's more like four hours, and that's with the pan sitting on a heating pad on medium.) Beat egg for egg wash and brush over top. Pick holes at intervals with a toothpick or skewer to let air bubbles out.

Bake at 325° F. for 1 hour. Crust will be dark brown and glossy. Cool on wire rack.

Return to welcome page...