Passport & Plate - Romanian Traditional Dessert - 'Cozonac'
Romania | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos
Ingredients
Ingredients for dough
1 kg all purpose flour
300 gr sugar
500 ml milk
100 ml sunflower oil
100 gr melted butter
7 egg yolks
50 gr dry yeast
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon rum extract
Ingredients for cocoa and walnut filling
7 egg whites
3-4 tablespoons sugar
4-5 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon rum extract
500 gr roasted walnut
250 gr of raisins
How to prepare this recipeHow to prepare the dough?
Step 1: Heat the milk. Sweeten the dry yeast with 1 tablespoon of sugar and add 1 tablespoon of flour. Dissolve the yeast-sugar-flour mixture into 3-4 tablespoons of the warm milk (not boiled) and set aside until it cools down.
Step 2: Boil one glass of milk. In a different bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of flour with the hot glass of milk. When the mixture cools down, add it over the yeast mixture obtained at step no. 1 and set aside to grow for 5-10 minutes. In this time the mixture should have doubled its size. Strain the flour into a large bowl. Once the mixture has doubled its volume, pour it over the flour and mix well. The traditional way of mixing these ingredients is by hand. A mixer can be also used to mix all these ingredients; however, my recommendation is to go for the traditional way.
Step 3: Mix the sugar with the remainder of the warm milk. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved. Slowly pour the milk and sugar mixture (it should be still warm) over the dough from step 2. Mix well until all the ingredients are incorporated.
Step 4: Mix the egg yolks with one pinch of salt. Add them slowly to the dough obtained at step no. 3. You will get a sticky dough at this step. Add the vanilla and rum extracts.
Step 5: Slowly add the melted butter on the edges of the bowl of the dough obtained at step no. 4 and mix very well, knead the dough very well. The more you knead, the better the „cozonac” will be. Proceed in the same manned with the sunflower oil.
Step 6: At this stage you should have a compact dough ready to be knead. You should knead the dough for approximately half an hour. At the end of the process, the dough should have a good consistency (it should not be very soft) and it should not be sticky. It will be smooth, elastic and shinny.
Step 7: Once you are done with kneading the dough, cover it with foil and leave it to grow. Given that the time needed by the dough to rise depends on temperature, flour, etc. the key indicator to know that the dough is ready is that it has doubled its size (you can make a sign with the marker on the bowl just to be sure that your appreciation is accurate).
While the dough is rising you can prepare the filling.
How to prepare the filling?
Beat the egg whites until they change color to white then add the sugar (of course you should use a mixer to beat the egg whites). Add the cocoa, the vanilla and rum extract and mix well with a whisk, stirring from bottom to top paying attention to the fact that you do not want the white eggs to be deflated. Mix well until it forms a paste. Keep aside the walnuts and the raisins, you will add these over this paste (the photography is self-explanatory).
Assembly
Butter 4 baking pans during the rising time.
Once the dough has doubled in bulk put it on the table. Divide the dough into 4 equal sized pieces and begin working.
You can make a very simple cozonac by just shaping the dough into loaves and baking them.
Stretch each piece into a loose rectangle, about 20 cm by 15 or so. Spread each of the rectangles with your cocoa filling and on top add walnuts and raisins. Be careful toleabe a 2 cm margin around the edges. Roll the two rectangles up avoiding any filling squeezing out.
Place your cozonac in the baking pans and let them rise again until double in bulk.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Once the cozonac have doubled in bulk, glaze them with the one or two egg yolgs mixed with double cream. Sprinkle each cozonac with granulated sugar, sesame or poppy seeds. I chose to sprinkle with sesame and poppy seeds.
Bake the cozonac for 15 minutes at 180 degrees, then lower the heat to 150 and bake for another 30-35 minutes. The cozonac should be a rich golden brown color.
Remove the cozonaci from their pans as soon as they are done, and let them cool on a rack or a towel overnight. These are best the next day, and will last for a week or so.
The story behind this recipeIt is about tradition. It is about family. It is about always going back to the roots to remember who you really are and why you came Here. It is about the creation act and creativity, about the holy hometown and childhood, about parents and grandparents, joy, love and happiness. It is about family in its simplicity, beauty and uniqueness.
I have been brought up in the spirit of the traditional family of the small towns of a small former communist country. Every year, all the family gathers at home with love and joy and participates to putting together the holiday dinner.
The dessert introduced by me is a traditional dessert, a sweet type of bread, named Cozonac that Romanians usually prepare for Easter and Christmas holidays. It is said that this dessert finds its beginnings in Ancient Egypt, later on the Greeks and the Romans started preparing it as well.
To be honest, Cozonac has a reputation of being hard to cook and very time consuming. Some people say that the true test of a baker in Romania is to master the art of making.
I don’t really remember the year when I had my first ‘Cozonac’ moment but I know I was a couple of years old. It was right before Easter holidays when I surprised my grandmother, with her golden hands, handling the dough so elegant you could only see love and passion in her eyes, care and experience on her hands. She used to make 12-15 similar breads at once and baked them in her huge clay oven which yielded the best bread in the whole world. Cozonac it’s the smell of my childhood and I couldn’t go a holiday without baking it or eating it, it just wouldn’t be the same. That was the first moment when I received my first dough to grow it and to make my first Cozonac. It was a unique ‘hand-in-hand’ moment with my grandmother, it was a powerful moment for me and I connected to her for eternity. Since that very moment, every year for holidays I have always been involved in the preparation of this traditional dessert.
