Honey Potica

Honey potica falls into the group of poticas with the longest tradition. This is not surprising since honey is one of the oldest sweeteners known to mankind and since Slovenia has a very long beekeeping tradition. There are 5 beekeepers per 1000 inhabitants in Slovenia, which ranks it at the top in the EU as far as the population of beekeepers per capita goes. Slovenia is also the home of the Carniolan honeybee, an autochthonous Slovenian bee.

To learn more about potica, read Is it pizza? No, it’s potica!.

To learn more about beekeeping in Slovenia, tune in to the Feel Slovenia podcast A Bee's Eye View on Slovenia.

In Slovenia, Beekeeping Is Sacred—and Key for a Sustainable Food System

Recipe

Ingredients for 1 potica baked in a potičnik of diameter of about 24 cm:

Dough

• 400 g flour

• 7 g instant yeast

• 80 g butter

• 60 g sugar

• 2 egg yolks

• 170 ml warm milk

• 1 tbsp rum

• zest of 1 lemon

• 1 tsp vanilla paste (can be substituted with vanilla essence)

• a pinch of salt

• 1 egg for the egg wash

Honey Filling

• 240 g honey

• 160 g cookie crumbs

• 160 g ground walnuts

• 60 g butter

• zest of 1 lemon (grated)

• 1 egg yolk + 3 egg whites

Instructions:

Dough

1. In a bowl, combine flour and yeast.

2. Heat the milk, sugar, and butter in a sauce pan until butter is melted.

3. Add lemon zest, rum and vanilla to the milk mixture and stir well.

4. Once the milk mixture is sufficiently cool, add 2 egg yolks and mix.

5. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and knead by hand or using a mixer until the dough is soft and elastic. It should not stick to your hands. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size (about 40 minutes).

Filling

1. Warm up butter and honey in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.

2. Pour the boiling honey mixture over ground walnuts and mix in the cookie crumbs and grated zest of 1 lemon.

3. Once the mixture has cooled a bit, add the egg yolk.

4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Slowly fold the whipped egg white into the honey walnut mixture mixture. Add enough egg whites to make the filling easy to spread, but it should not be runny.

Making potica

1. Heat the oven to 180 C (360 F). Traditionally, potica is baked in a ceramic pan called potičnica. If you have it, fill it up with water and place it into the oven until the water is boiling (this way potica does not dry up too much during baking). If you do not have it, you can use a bundt cake pan. Butter potičnica or a standard bundt cake pan well.

2. Dust the working area with flour. I usually roll out the dough on a tablecloth so it does not cool down too much during rolling.

3. Roll the dough into a 40 cm x 35 cm rectangle about 0.5 cm thick.

4. Spread the filling in an even layer over the buttered dough.
5. Roll up the dough by hand, stretching it slightly with each roll. Seal the ends securely by gently pulling dough down to cover ends.
6. Transfer the potica roll to the prepared pan so that the seam is looking upward (this way it will not be visible once potica is taken out of the pan).

7. Prick the potica with a toothpick to eliminate air pockets and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes.

8. Gently brush the potica with an egg wash.

9. Bake potica for an hour. After 30 minutes cover the potica with aluminum foil, so that the top won't brown too much.

10. Leave potica in the mold to cool down before taking it out.

11. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, slice and serve!