Daring Baker October 2011: Povitica

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

I adapted the recipe that Jenni provided, opting to work with the quarter batch (single loaf) recipe due to time constraints. I measured out all the dry ingredients the night before, mixing the ones I could (for instance the sugar, flour and yeast), and set the aside. The goal was to come home, make the dough as quickly as I could, and let it have the full hour and half to rise before Allyson came over.

Since the filling we were working with was walnut based, I opted to go with flax seeds/ water to replace the egg in the dough and filling.  I also reduced the amount of salt in the recipe as the Earth Balance non-dairy butter I use is salted, and the recipe calls for unsalted.

While the yeast activated, I scalded the soy milk. I'm not certain that this was a necessary step with non-dairy milk, but since I don't have a lot of experience with bread, I figured it couldn't hurt.

Top, clockwise: melted butter, salt / sugar mix,
yeast/ flour/ sugar/ water - active, flax seed/water mix.

I mixed the rest of the ingredients for the dough into the milk, adding the flour by increments until the dough was cohesive enough to pull from the bowl. I ended up adding a lot more of the flour as I kneeded the dough, but eventually got it to the point it was a soft ball.

Dough ingredients and first batch of flour.

More flour made it thicker, like a soup.

Getting better - the dough is pulling away from the bowl.

Final result - smooth dough ball, kneeded and soft.

I placed the dough in an oiled bowl, with plastic wrap and then a towel over it, and put the whole thing in my oven and waited for Allyson to come over. My timing was off, however, and once she came over, we ended up waiting another half hour, then starting the filling before the dough was done rising.

Mixed with milk and butter.

Dry ingredients for filling.

The filling, a mix of walnuts, sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, soy milk, butter, flax seed / water mixture (to replace the egg), and vanilla. The end product reminded me a bit of granola, though it smelled like a very yummy oatmeal breakfast.




Using the PVC pipe we purchased to roll out the phyllo dough for the challenge a few months back, we rolled out the dough. Once it was large enough, we pulled it over our hands to make it thin. This went faster / was easier because there were two of us. Also, the Povitica dough had less elasticity than the croissant dough, and kept it's stretched-out shape more easily.

Stretching the dough.

More stretching. Four hands are better than two.

We covered the dough with melted butter, then spooned on the filling, and rolled the dough over it. The result was reminiscent of a very lumpy burrito. We looped the dough into a greased bread pan, tucking the sides in, buttered the top (I don't like coffee, and so omitted it from the recipe) and set it in the oven to bake.

Filling spread on the dough.

Rolled, and coiled in the pan.

The house smelled divine after half an hour, and when an hour was up (15 minutes at 350F, and 45 minutes at 300F), the bread looked pretty good too.

Finished Povitica.

We decided to share our bounty with friends on Friday, and since we only have one loaf, I haven't taste-tested it yet. I'll report back as to how it came out, but I'm excited by this recipe, and see great potential for it for breakfast bread.

New tools/ ingredients:  none
Recipes used:  from Daring Baker Challenge
Co-bakers:  Allyson
Date: Oct 25 and 26, 2011