Dried Apple Potica

The recipe for dried apple potica is due to Falentova Rezka, who first prepared it over a century ago in 1915. As she was from a town called Podbrezje, the potica is also called Podbreška potica. The reason for me calling it dried apple potica is that the name Podbreška potica is protected and can only be given to potice prepared by 7 women from Podbrezje, listed in the link below that use ingredients from specified local sources. But everyone can bake their own dried apple potica!

The recipe by Rezka has won multiple potica awards and has been given as a gift to the pope for Easter in 2019. No wonder the pope is such a potica fan!

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

Podbreška Potica Association

Slavna pota Podbreške potice

Recipe

Ingredients for 1 potica baked in a potičnik of diameter of 26 cm:

Dough

• 400 g all-purpose flour

• 100 g spelt flour

• 10 g instant yeast

• 50 g butter

• 1 tbsp sour cream

• 75 g sugar

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk

• 1 tsp vanilla sugar

• zest of 1/2 lemon

• 200 ml of milk (or more as needed)

• 1 egg for the egg wash

Dried Apple Filling

• 350 g dried apples

• 125 g sugar

• 75 g butter, room temperature

• 1.5 tbsp sour cream

• 1 egg yolk

• 2 egg whites

• 170 ml milk

• 20 ml rum

• 10 g vanilla sugar

• zest of 1/2 lemon

• a pinch of ground cinnamon, cloves

Instructions:

Dough

1. In a bowl, combine both types of flour and yeast.

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

3. Add lemon zest, sour cream, and vanilla sugar to the milk mixture and stir well.

4. Once the milk mixture is sufficiently cool, add the egg and the egg yolk 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. Grind the dried apples and pour boiling milk over them. Mix in rum and let them soak.

2. Add vanilla sugar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, butter, sour cream, and the egg yolk, and mix until combined.

3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Slowly fold the whipped egg whites into the filling.

Making potica

1. Heat the oven to 180 C. 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 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 at least 40 minutes. 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!