This past weekend my father’s cousin, Liz, came to visit to teach my sister and I how to make Potica. My grandma made the best and its been hard finding a replacement at a store since she passed away. Now Liz is trying to pass down the tradition of this nutty dessert.
What is Potica?
Potica (pronounced as “po-tee-sa”) is a nut roll and a traditional festive pastry from Slovenia. It is a sweet bread made with a filling of nuts, butter, and sugar.
Here we ground all the walnuts with the help of a KitchenAid attachment. This sped up the process immensely!
We let Liz knead the dough for a proper consistency.
We rolled out a table cover across the kitchen table, then we sprinkled flour all around so that the dough wouldn’t stick.
We used the roller to get started rolling out the dough. The goal is to get the dough to be almost as big as the table without tearing it!
Liz started stretching the dough out with her hands. It’s a long, gently process. Patience is a must.
It got very tedious!
When we were satisfied with the dough, we then put clumps of the filling across various parts of the stretch-out dough. Then, we carefully used the back of a spoon to spread the mixture out.
We then had to start the “roll” by hand.
Once the roll was started, we could use the tablecloth as a helper to get it moving quicker.
The potica is so large! We don’t have kind of baking tin that it would fit in.
We chopped the potica up into smaller sections, then pinched closed the ends of the rolls.
These were potica rolls fresh out of the pans.
The sweet inner swirls of the walnut raisin potica.
This isn’t a how-to on baking Potica, but a recap of my day while baking Potica! Yum!
Potica: An Authentic Slovenian Dessert
- 1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
- ¼ cup white sugar
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 cup butter (softened)
- 6 egg yolks
- 1 ⅓ cups milk
- 5 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter (melted)
- 1 cup honey
- 1 ½ cups raisins
- 1 ½ cups chopped walnuts
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- In a small mixing bowl, dissolve yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, and 3 tablespoons of the flour in warm milk. Mix well, and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
- In a large mixing bowl cream the butter with the remaining sugar. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the yeast mixture, remaining milk, 4 cups of flour and the salt; mix well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
- Lightly grease one or two cookie sheets. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two equal pieces and roll Out to 1/4 to 1/2 inch thickness. Spread each piece with melted butter, honey, raisins, walnuts and cinnamon. Roll each piece up like a jelly roll and pinch the ends. Place seam side down onto the prepared baking sheets. Let rise until double in volume. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 60 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
