One of the ways I passed the time during last spring's lockdown was watching the
Great British Baking Show. Previous seasons were available on Hoopla through our public library, so I dove in. I was surprised and delighted, watching the Advanced Dough episode (dough with extra sugar or eggs), when Chetna made a potica.
Well, technically, she made a
povitica, the Croatian equivalent of my family's traditional Slovenian holiday bread. She had dried dates as well as walnuts in the filling, stacked the loaves rather than making a spiral, but it was definitely familiar to me.
And to Paul Hollywood, as well. She'd made hers in the first, Spotlight Challenge, and when the Technical Challenge rolled around, Paul wanted everyone to make... a povitica. The filling was a little different--it had cocoa as well as ground walnuts, butter and sugar--and they baked it in a vertical figure-eight in a loaf pan, but it was clearly another take on potica. Chetna nailed it, of course; she was the only baker who realized just how long it needed to bake, nearly an hour.
Fast forward to yesterday. I stopped at my favorite bakery,
Great Harvest down on Willamette, to stock up on bread and maybe get a chocolate babka. They only make them during the holidays; imagine a raisin bread made with sweet roll dough, but instead of nasty, slimy baked raisins (I may have opinions), there's chocolate chips.
Unfortunately, they'd sold out, and the ones they were rolling up wouldn't be ready for another hour and a half, so I went home babka-less.
But Denise had asked me to make us a potica this year, and I thought, why not try that povitica as well? I normally make half of my grandmother's potica recipe; this time I'd make a full batch and divide it in half. The recipe for my traditional walnut filling is
here; for the chocolate, I borrowed liberally from Paul's
recipe, but made a few changes. He used egg yolk as a binder, reserving the white for egg wash. My potica dough uses egg yolks, and whips the whites to fold into the filling, so that's what I did here.
Modified Chocolate Povitica Filling
2.25 oz butter
4 T cream
1 tsp vanilla
10 oz walnuts
3.5 oz caster sugar (a very fine granulated sugar. I just buzzed my regular sugar in the food processor for a bit.)
2 T. baking cocoa
2 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup chocolate chips.
Warm butter and cream until just melted; add vanilla. Pulse 3.5 oz sugar in the food processor until fine. Add walnuts and cocoa and pulse until the consistency of coarse sand. Add butter/cream mixture and pulse to blend.
Whip egg whites until frothy, then add 1/4 cup sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold chocolate mixture into egg whites.
Roll dough as for regular potica and spread with filling. Sprinkle on chocolate chips. Roll up, curl into a spiral and put in a greased small baking dish. Cover and let rise until light, egg wash with a beaten egg, bake 325° F for one hour--basically, treat it like a regular potica.
It was actually kind of efficient, making both fillings. The honey/butter/cream/brown sugar mixture needs to come to a boil before mixing the the ground walnuts; it can then come off the burner while residual heat melts the butter and cream for the chocolate mix. And I beat all the egg whites at once, transferring half into the walnut mix, then folding the chocolate mix from the food processor into the stand mixer bowl. At the last minute, I scattered a cup of chocolate chips over the povitica, to make it more babka-like.
I had a little extra work surface this year--I had the folding table I'd bought for quilting last winter set up in the kitchen, so wasn't restricted to my rather inadequate counter top.
I still have trouble getting the rise i'd like. My kitchen is just too cold. I envy the GBBS contestants their proofing drawers. I think I may also tweak the yeast content next time. Beard on Bread says to use a full tablespoon of dry yeast where the packets say 2-1/4 teaspoons, and I've had good luck with that adjustment elsewhere. Still, eventually, I got some nice plump spirals, so brushed on the egg and popped them both in the oven.
Finally cool enough to cut by supper, so we broke into the chocolate one. And you know? It's not bad!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've always complained about how long my poticas take to rise. Four, five hours, sitting on a heating pad, or in a post-firing warm studio; my house doesn't feel that cold!
Folksinger/storyteller Scott Alarik used to tell a story about Ingemar Ingebretson, an old Norwegian farmer on his deathbed, wanting one last taste of his wife's famous beef pasties. He asks his friend Ole to go bring him one, as he's fading fast. After a long wait, Ole returns. I'm sorry, Ingemar Ingrebretson, he says. Hilda says those pasties, they're for after the funeral.
First apple crisp of the season!
Heart-shaped deep dish pizza!
Sometime mid-January, I got an Instagram instant message from the partner of my potter friend, Kat. Her fortieth birthday was coming up and he was planning a surprise party; could I help him quietly get word out to her friends at Club Mud? And did I know anyone who could bake a gluten-free birthday cake for her?
Every year, I'd bake a pie for Thanksgiving. Usually apple, sometimes black/blueberry, occasionally pecan. Never pumpkin; I hate the taste and the texture. Nasty.
Traditionally, this is the one day of the year Denise does baking--Old Fashioned Cocoa Cake, recipe from an ancient can of baking cocoa. This year, we decided to try something different, so baked the cake together. She's still in charge of applying the frosting.
Birthday cake!
