Passport & Plate - Potica
Slovenia | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients:
Yeast Mixture:
½ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon plain flour
2 tablespoons warm water
1½ teaspoons dry yeast
Dough:
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 cups plain flour
Filling:
1¾ cups ground walnuts
¼ cup milk
¼ cup butter
1 egg yolk
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon cocoa
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
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Method:
First things first — activate the yeast. In a small bowl mix sugar, flour and yeast into two tablespoons of warm water. Cover with cling wrap and allow to stand while you prepare the dough.
Heat milk in a saucepan until it's just below boiling, stirring constantly. Just before it's about to boil, take it off the heat. In a large bowl, mix the milk with the sugar and salt. Then, add the beaten egg, yeast mixture, melted butter and about ¼ cup of the flour.
Mix thoroughly (you may need to get the whisk out if clumps form) and slowly add the rest of the flour until it starts to form a ball. Take it out of the bowl and place it on a floured surface. Then you'll need to knead it, gradually adding more flour until it is smooth, doughy and not sticky (you may not use all the flour). When it's ready, place the dough in a bowl, cover with a tea towel and let rise for an hour and a half.
Next comes the walnut filling. Place walnuts in a food processor until relatively ground (a few chunks add character). When you have 1¾ cups of ground walnuts, add the sugar, cinnamon and cocoa. In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter to boiling and pour over the mixture before adding the egg yolk and vanilla.
Preheat over to 175°C. To roll the dough it's easiest to spread a clean sheet over your bench. Sprinkle it with flour and start rolling the dough out with a rolling pin to a rectangle-like shape. You want it really thin (almost transparent), but this just affects how thick your layers will be. When it's thin enough, spread the walnut filling over the dough and roll it into an even log.
You can bake the postica on a tray, but I like to place it in a loaf tin in a coil shape. This means it bakes in a loaf shape and, when cut, will have an impressive swirled texture. Brush the top of the loaf with butter and place in the oven. After 15 minutes, turn down to 150°C and bake for a further 45 minutes.
Remove from oven, allow to cool slightly and eat it while it's hot!
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The story behind the recipe:
To say this all started on a Sunday would be an oversight. Really, it started many years ago in a country that now doesn't exist. It started in a kitchen where there was never enough food, where you ate the same thing all winter. It started in Slovenia, in a village without roads; it started with my Staramama.
But for me, this recipe started on a Sunday. Sunday is synonymous with tradition, and for us — for a long time — our tradition was the drive to Keilor, taking a seat at a laminex table, eating half of the food placed before us and then, later, coffee and potica. Without fail, Staramama would place the walnut loaf on the table each Sunday, it's layers spinning and swirling, the sugary filling oozing onto the plate if we were lucky enough to catch it straight out of the oven. To her, it was as necessary as a loaf of bread.
Growing up in Klenik, a small village outside of Ljubljana, Staramama never had enough to eat. Potica (pronounced paw-tee-tzah) seems like it would have been the ultimate decadence when polenta and cabbage were all you had to eat all winter. Years later she would still set the table with twice as much food as needed, not wanting anyone to go hungry. When she taught me how to make potica, her measurements were industrial, almost infinite, making enough to survive the winter. She bakes without recipe, the method inherent through practice. My dad tells me how he used to sit on the porch and crack the walnuts by hand.
She doesn't bake potica anymore — in fact, no one really does. But when I do, it gets us talking. Taking the loaf out of the oven, the sweet bread aroma still reminds me of her home. The smell is of Sunday, the taste is Staramama.
