Potica Or Mrs Meros Christmas Bread |
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Prep Time: 0 Minutes Cook Time: 60 Minutes |
Ready In: 60 Minutes Servings: 48 |
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Mrs. Mero was an old family friend of ours in Montana. She would make this bread every year and send us two loaves at Christmastime. We always anxiously awaited the mail to see her familiar handwriting on the package. Read more . We would ration it out to one slice a day for each of us so we could enjoy it as long as possible. She would roll the bread layer out so thin that the filling layer was as thick or thicker than the bread layer which made it so delicious. The filling is a rich walnut-honey concoction that will make you swoon! I never got a chance to ask Mrs. Mero where she got the recipe or what the 'real' name of it was (we always called it her Christmas Bread), but I am absolutely positive after researching on the internet that her recipe is actually Potica (say po-tee-sah), a traditional Slovenian holiday bread. This takes a lot of time and patience to make, but it really pays off in the end. Enjoy! Picture is from the web. Ingredients:
bread dough |
2 packages yeast |
1/2 c. warm water |
1/2 lb. butter (2 sticks - 1 c.), melted |
3 eggs |
1/4 c. sugar |
2 tsp. salt |
9 c. flour |
2 1/2 c. fresh milk |
nut filling |
2 lb. ground walnuts |
1/2 c. butter |
2 c. milk |
1 c. sugar |
1 c. honey |
4 eggs |
1 tbsp. cinnamon ( – see my notes below) |
Directions:
1. Bread Dough:
2. Combine flour, sugar, salt; add to heated lukewarm milk. Put yeast in 1/2 c. warm water and let stand to mix well. Pour into flour mixture and mix well. Beat eggs and add to dough with melted butter and knead well, and place in greased bowl to rise until double in bulk, then stretch.
3. Nut Filling:
4. Grind walnuts. Heat butter until golden brown and add nuts, stirring constantly; when thoroughly warm, add milk and mix well on low heat until mixture boils. Add sugar and honey, mix well; bring to a boil and boil for 20 minutes. Beat eggs and pour slowly into mixture, stirring constantly and boil 10 minutes more. This mixture scorches easily, so heat must not be too high. Cool mixture.
5. Putting it all together:
6. Divide dough into pieces for loaves (however big or small you decide). Roll or stretch out dough into size appropriate for pan; very thinly. Distribute filling evenly among dough pieces, roll up like cinnamon rolls; do not slice. Pinch and seal edges and ends; place in loaf pan(s). Cover and let rise in a warm draft-free place for about 1 hour until about doubled. Bake for 1 hour at 325° F.
7. The above directions were Mrs. Mero’s (word-for-word), but to clarify the directions for those of you who have not enjoyed Potica, here are a few more instructions:
8. Kneading the dough very well will help to develop the gluten in the bread which will help you when it comes time to stretch the dough.
9. ? - I could have sworn that she put cinnamon in the filling, but her recipe didn’t include it in either the ingredients or instructions, so I don’t think she forgot it. It might have been my imagination that it was there. If you want to add it, I would suggest adding the amount I listed. What I might have tasted was all the love she baked into it. :)
10. There will be a LOT of dough. As said in the instructions, roll and stretch the dough out until it is paper-thin. It will about cover a table meant to seat 6. It is easier to do this on a flour-covered cloth. Spread the filling over the dough and roll up using the cloth to help you. Cut the rolls of dough into lengths to fit your loaf pans. One thing Mrs. Mero would do is make small rolls of dough, and then put three or four lengths of dough into one loaf pan, so that when you sliced the bread, you would see three or four spirals in the baked slices, instead of just one. Hope that makes sense. It’s a lot of work, but it is SO worth it and makes a lot so it’s worth the time. Plus, you will never taste anything so delicious!
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