I may not be good at making žganci (I’m going to try again with some advice from Slovenia – Thanks Rok Gros) but I can make potica. (Say the word like poe-tisa). My grandmother Marie Begus Koetting came to visit my family in the 70s and taught us how to make it and it is the only Slovenian food I knew how to make before starting my blog.
My Grandfather Joe Koetting was German and he liked the bread a little thicker than some other potica I’ve had. From what I can tell potica is on a continuum with a thickness between baklava and cinnamon bread depending on what region you are from. The fillings change a little too. My Grandma Marie Begus Koetting used a walnut based recipe. Here is our recipe with directions. This recipe is not for the faint of heart it takes about 5 hours to make with the rising times. I usually have a ‘hen’ day and invite my girlfriends in for a day of baking and hanging out together. This year my daughter Katie and I made it together. What a pleasure.
Slovenian Potica
Dough
2 packets dry yeast or 2 rounded T bulk dry yeast
1T salt
12 Cups flour
1 qt milk
½ lb butter
1cup sugar
6 egg yolks beaten
Scald milk. Let yeast rise in ½ cup warm water. As milk cools, add butter, sugar and salt. Stir to dissolve. Add flour to milk mixture a cup at a time, mixing with wooden spoon or paddle after each addition. After adding about half the flour, stir in the prepared yeast mixture. Work in the rest of the flour. Then work dough with spoon or paddle about 20 min until it falls from the spoon. (It is almost impossible to kneed and you don’t want to get too much more flour worked in, so the paddling method is best.) Cut through dough with paddle or spoon several times to release trapped air bubbles. Butter a warm bowl and put the dough in it to rise for about 2 hours or until double.
Filling
4 lbs waluts ground into a paste
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
¼ lb butter
6 egg whites beaten stiff
Katie and Lisa grinding walnuts with a meat grinder
Scald milk. Add honey, sugar and butter to dissolve. Add to ground nuts. Then fold in beaten egg whites
Preheat oven at 300.
When dough has risen, turn out onto a floured tablecloth.
Roll or pull into a rectangle about 2 feet by 5 feet. Stretch and roll the dough without poking holes in it.
Spread filling on.
Roll like a jellyroll.
Grease small loaf pans. Cut roll into lengths to fit pans.
Let rise in pans for 1 hour. Bake at 300 for 1 hr 15 min.
And a blast from the past – Here we are in the 1990s from left to right – my daughter Katrina, me, my mother Sue Morey.
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