Kozjansko Bread Potica
Bread potica is a type of bread pudding prepared by alternating slices of bread soaked in milk and a filling made from a local specialty, baked cream, wrapped into dough and baked for an hour.
It originates in the Kozjansko region of Slovenija and it reflects the difficult economic situation in which families living there in the past often found themselves. Every crumb of bread was valuable and even in the absence of the many basic ingredients needed to prepare potica and other cakes for the holidays, the housewives found something special to put on the holiday table.
To learn more about potica in general, read Is it pizza? No, it’s potica!.
Bogataj, Janez. Taste Slovenia. Ljubljana: Rokus Gifts & National Geographic, 2007.
Recipe
Ingredients for a potica that fits a rectangular 35x24 cm pan:
Dough
250 g flour
5 g instant yeast
20 g butter
40 g sugar
2 egg yolks
125 ml milk
1 tbsp rum
zest of 1 lemon
a pinch of salt
1 egg for the egg wash
Filling
500 g baked cream (the recipe is here)
6 eggs
200 g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla paste or vanilla essence
500 g fresh farmer's cheese or ricotta
around 1 kg of old bread (I used home-baked brioche bread following Tartine's recipe)
milk for soaking bread (up to 1 l)
100 g raisins soaked in rum overnight
Instructions:
Dough
In a bowl, combine flour and yeast.
Heat the milk, sugar, and butter in a sauce pan until butter is melted.
Add lemon zest and rum to the milk mixture and stir well.
Once the milk mixture is sufficiently cool, add the 2 egg yolks, and mix.
Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, mix a little and then add salt. 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
- Mix baked cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla paste, farmer's cheese, cinnamon, and zest of 1 lemon in a large bowl.
Assembling
Take the baking pan in which you baked the sponge cake and butter it. Generously dust your working area with flour. Roll the dough into a rectangle roughly twice and a half the size of the rectangular pan.
Put the yeast dough into the baking pan so that it covers the bottom and the sides. Half of it should be outside the pan (see the picture).
Slice the bread and soak the slices in milk. How fast the bread absorbs the milk will depend on the type of the bread used (with brioche bread, the sliced soaked up the milk very fast).
Place bread slices on the yeast dough, spread a layer of baked cream mixture over it and sprinkle with raisins.
Repeat step 4 until you use all the ingredients. I had three bread layers in the end.
Once you use up the bread and the filling, cover the bread potica with the other half of the yeast dough. Using a brush, gently brush the top with egg wash.
Pierce a bunch of times with a tooth pick.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180C (340 F) for 1 hour.
Let cool, sprinkle with sugar, slice, and serve with apple sauce.
