Its Beginning to Look a lot like Potica-Season: Part II

I am posting this second part of my Potica series a bit later than anticipated. My grand plan was that I would post it after I had finished baking potica this year, but as it has been with all grand plans this year, covid ruined it. Instead of baking potica with my mother and sister and aunties this week, I have been on the couch isolating, now an official member of Club Covid.

I am hoping I will have time to bake it coming out of isolation on Christmas Eve (a little minor miracle with that timing) but in the meantime, I will share this piece depicting the final part of the potica making process as it goes in a covid-free time.

Stay safe out there friends!

The Making of Potica

(Continued from last post)

The Making of the Filling:

Divide and conquer:

You, begin the second dough. You, the filling!

Always the walnut first, the iconic potica for our family. First, the grinding of the nuts.  Never in a food processor. Only by hand, using Nana’ s old-fashioned metal grinder.  We designate someone to do the grinding, though we all take a turn, spinning the lever slowly, like an old-school pencil sharpener, turning out soft and sweet walnut shavings, buttery transformations of the whole nut. 

Mom and the aunties reminisce how it was their job to shell them by hand, and how their knuckles would be stiff and swollen after a pound bag.  They have since discovered already-shelled walnuts from Costco that they deem acceptably fresh.

Grind. Taste. Grind. Coffee. 

On stovetop, simmer honey, butter and cream. Add vanilla pod and walnut shavings.  Open window to let smell permeate, our Slovenian pride. Add a couple splashes of rum.

Rum in your coffee?

She is 18 now.

Don’t mind if I do. 

My younger cousin beats the second dough, her older sister takes pictures. My mom and sister knead, eyes on the timer. The Montreal Aunties help Nana eat pea soup and crusty bread with butter. 

Ding! Has it been two hours already? Check dough, peeling the wax paper off its soft belly. Has it over-risen? No it’s perfect.  Hastily cover table with a sheet, the same large white one Nana always used.  Smooth out all wrinkles and pull it taut, stringing the corners to the table legs.  Flour the surface (of the sheet), filling the pores of the fabric. Turn dough onto cloth and punch it down. It deflates like a balloon. 

Rolling the Potica: 

before rolling

Using the largest wooden rolling pin on hand, gently flatten the doughy mound into a rectangular shape, rolling from the centre outwards, and being careful not to make the edges too thin.

Continue to roll,  coaxing the dough into a large thin rectangle the size of a small continent, 37 inches wide and 19 long.  Measure with wooden yardstick.

Let Auntie Steph make necessary adjustments until perfect. 

after.

Rub the skins off toasted hazelnuts. Line one by one along width of rectangle.  Take a spatula to scrape the cooling walnut-honey filling onto the dough in several blobs. Spread the sugary gooey filling as evenly as possible over the dough canvas, wielding the spatula as deliberately and delicately as paintbrush.

Keep spreading until Most-Seasoned Potica-Baker gives her critical nod of approval.

Lick the sticky remains of the filling off the spatula. Bicker over who gets to lick the bowl. Get chastised back to attention- there’s still a long day ahead. 

Gather at least three other sets of hands to help roll. Assign another to grease and flour two round bundt pans. Beginning at hazelnut edge of rectangle, lift dough up tight, pulling, and then roll. Continue to lift and roll, forming a long log of tight spirals. Cut down exact middle. Pinch excess dough at each end  and connect ends forming two pale doughy wreaths. Allow Most Seasoned Potica-Baker, to carefully lift and place each log into pans.  

The Second Rising: 

Cover with waxed paper and a tea towel and let rise another 45 minutes.

No time for a break. Begin yeast activation of third and final dough, stir and simmer remaining fillings, down more boozy coffee.  

The Baking:

After second-rising, cut slits in top layers of dough to allow steam to escape and bake for one hour at 350 degrees. Continue process of grinding and rolling and kneading and simmering and rising and baking until nightfall. 

Slits cut for steam to escape and ready for the final baking.

Order in Indian food*.  Send Dad to pick it up.

Drain bottles of wine. 

Take in the tsunami mess in the kitchen but have no energy to do anything about cleaning it. 

*Indian food is apparently traditional Slovenian Potica-making fuel in our household

The Preservation:

Take the final two poticas out of oven and let cool on wire wrack.  Just before collapsing into bed, bundle in layers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Place in freezer immediately, for optimal, fresh-baked flavour.  Resist urge to break off a section of crust before wrapping. To do so would be grounds for disownment. 

Retire with butter and flour pasted to the soles of your feet and the jingling tunes of Buble and Swift still reverberating between your eardrums.

The amount of flour, coconut shreds, and poppyseed mixture at the end of this is wild.

The Final Washing: 

On the morning of Christmas, the long-awaited day of unwrapping, remove each potica from the freezer and peel away its layers in holy reverent silence. Let thaw, oohing and aahing to one another.

In a glass cup, mix together one part honey to one part milk (or soy milk) until combined. Using a pastry brush, apply the milk and honey wash upon the crust of each potica, not so thickly to make them soggy, but enough so they shine like trophies. Snap pictures using a variety of angles and filters. 

Realize (yet again) that the sublime beauty of the potica can never be done justice by a screen. Email, facebook, iMessage, snapchat and instagram the pictures anyway.

The Slicing: 

Using the sharpest serrated knife, cut smoothly into the walnut-honey potica. Make the first slice and transfer it to a large crystal platter. lay it delicately on its side, showcasing the thin golden-brown spirals of nutty filling, begging to be unravelled and devoured. Continue making smooth and measured slices into each of the six poticas, arranging them in a decorous and organized fashion upon the same crystal platter.  More pictures may be taken, but the allure of the bounty begs for the final moment in the process to commence:

The Tasting:

More coffee is brewed and potica is placed on dining room table next to an array of mugs and plates.  The bakers and potica eaters gather around the beckoning sweet nutty buttery spirals, all in their pajamas, and dig in. Take a small slice of one potica (usually the walnut first) and delicately peel away a layer of filling-blanketed flakey bread.  No one has ever used a fork.  The first bite we assess with the same analytical concentration as a group of CERN scientists. 

The verdict: It’s good. It’s delicious. It’s incredible...

But is it perfect? Is it Nana’s? 

Mom says it is too dry. Auntie Steph notes there is not enough booze. One Montreal Auntie argues there is too much booze.  The other remembers the nuts being more ground and less crumbly.   

In all honesty, I can’t quite remember how Nana’s potica tasted. I was six the last year she baked it.  And burned it. While I remember it was delicious of course, I can’t recall why or in what way, or even if it was any more delicious than the ones we produce year after year.  Perhaps it is not the perfect reincarnation of Nana’s. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.  Notes are made, congratulations and condolences are given, and fingers are licked thoroughly of crumbs.  Someone holds a slice of walnut potica up to Nana’s lips. She hesitates then takes a tiny bite and chews impossibly slowly. She finally swallows and a smile drifts across her face. How nice...Just how nice.

Always in our heart , Nana. Hope they have potica for you in heaven.

Merry December,

Jordan xoox