Its Beginning to Look a lot like Potica-Season (Christmas in a Slovenian Family)
In our family, Christmas is full of traditions: from celebrating St.Nick’s Day on December 5th, to picking out and decorating a tree, to baking cookies, to gifting and opening presents on Christmas day, and all the way to eating poppyseed cake on the Epiphany (or Little Christmas) on January 6th.
However, no tradition is fraught with as much anticipation, precision, and heightened sense of chaos as potica-making.
Potica (Po-teet-sah):
A sweet Slovenian nut roll so heavenly, it renders language inferior to adequately describe it in a mere sentence.
This is Nana’s recipe: nutty filling and moist yeast bread, just sweet enough, rolled into delicate spiraling layers of rich, moist, chewy crumbly, comforting, intoxicating, soft boozy bliss.
So complex and arduous to make - especially in the vast amounts we hungry Slovenians require - potica cake only graces our table twice a year: at Christmas and Easter.
Other European cultures have similar nut rolls that go by different names, but they are no poticas. Even other Slovenian households who also make potica produce versions that never quite compare to ours. The layers are not thin enough, or are indelicate or dry.
In potica baking, authentic taste and texture result from an intricate and careful process.
A few years ago while I was doing my Creative Writing degree. I documented this process. Beware that this post is almost as lengthy as the actual process of potica-baking, so I have broken it into two parts.
Today, we will begin at the beginning:
The Purchase of Ingredients:
Wake up before set alarm goes off. Wake up comatose sister. Mom is already in the kitchen, gathering ingredients from pantry into one or two (usually three) reusable bags to bring to Auntie Steph’s house, the most-seasoned potica-baker now replacing Nana.
Notice an essential item is low or missing. Quickly munch a light breakfast, bracing for a day of endless tasting before running out to the grocery store.
Park haphazardly, the time and importance of the day already weighing upon us. Grab oversized shopping cart and restock. See ingredients that are better, fresher, than what you have on hand and add them to cart. Buy more chocolate.
Buy a spread of cheese, hummus, bread, baby carrots, and grapes to nibble on while dough rises (one cannot live off chocolate alone). At the check-out, remember something else.
Run back and get it, to the audible groans of the shoppers in line behind you.
Back in the car, see message from Auntie Steph: need more booze. Stop at Liquor store. Buy strong dark rum to soak nuts and raisins. Buy Frangelico for richness. Buy wine--red and white-- to keep us sane.
Yes, there is booze in potica. But it is also a neccessity for spending the day in the kitchen with family.
The Preparation:
Arrive at Auntie Steph’s house invariably one to two hours off schedule, where a second pot of coffee awaits freshly brewed (my cousins and aunts from Montreal have already drained the first). Don aprons. Put a CD in the disc player. Michael Buble’s Christmas collection, later to be switched out for Taylor Swift’s, the younger generation’s preference.
Gather around kitchen table with my mom, sister, aunties and cousins; a cluck of girls and women* adorned in kitschy aprons with cutesy cooking quips like “Nice buns!”, and “Caution: Hot dish!”
(**While we are a very feminism-conscious family, potica-baking remains an all-female affair. If any male perhaps showed a real desire to learn the intricate art of its baking, I’m sure we would include him. But as of now, none have shown such passion, and there is no room for careless amateur error in our meticulous process.)
We make a game-plan to bake not one potica, but six. We used to bake just four (still more than enough), for each of the four traditional fillings that Nana used to make: poppy-seed, chocolate-hazelnut, buttery raisin and of course, the most beloved honey-walnut.
However, in recent years some family members have developed a gluten intolerance, and others (including me) have gone over to the dark side of veganism (A “condition” unfathomable to our relatives in Slovenia), and so our repertoire has expanded to include vegan chocolate-coconut, and poppyseed-fig versions as well as a gluten-free chocolate-hazelnut version.
After much experimentation and countless botched batches, the diet-conscious recipes we have developed are delicious and authentic enough to fool even the most particular potica connoisseurs in our clan. Except maybe Nana.
Still, no one is willing to sacrifice any of her four traditional poticas in place of the new modified versions.
So we plan for 6(!) poticas.
16 cups of flour (regular and gluten-free).
6 different fillings.
3 batches of dough.
1 hand-written recipe.
Nana’s original copy, raised high off counter on a curved iron cookbook stand, a protective pedestal. The page has three stains too many, blue-ink blurred in transparent pools.
2 tbsp? Or is it 2 tsp?
Its teaspoon.
Auntie Steph, Keeper of the Recipe Book, knows by heart.
The Rising of the Yeast:
We drain the dregs of our coffee mugs and get to work. Before the first dough can be started, we must activate the yeast. Always traditional bread yeast. Never instant rise. A tablespoon stirred into lukewarm milk, a spoonful of flour, a spoonful of sugar. Let sit in a warm place, the top of the fridge, a spot always bizarrely toasty, for twenty minutes. The first five crawl by.
Is it alive? Was the milk too hot? The air too cold?
Around the ten minute mark we check again. Hay-bale yellow bubbles climb steadily up the inside of the glass.
Exhale with celebratory relief, that yes, it is rising.
The Creation of the Dough:
After 15 minutes since activating the yeast, begin the first traditional dough. In stand mixer, cream butter (a brick), with sugar (just enough) until tousled(?). Add egg yolks, one at a time, preserving whites for a healthy frittata later. Beat into a daffodil yellow fluffy mousse. Measure out 5 cups of flour, 2/3 cups of cream, and 2/3 cup of milk (or more cream). Add a little of each, a little at a time. Beat beat beat.
Remember a little too late, the yeast(!), which has more than doubled in size. Pungent living foam rises above the mouth of the measuring cup, dribbling down the sides. Scrape it all in, harnessing every trickle of rising power. Beat. Chide whoever was in charge of its rising to be more diligent. Vow to set timers from now on.
The Kneading:
Argue about whether to do it by hand, Nana’s way, or to use the convenient dough hook attachment.
Attach dough hook, knowing Nana would tut-tut us, if she was still in her mind.
She is in her wheel chair by the window, sitting in the sunlight. She folds and unfolds a napkin. Over and over, muttering.
How nice how nice.
What’s nice, Nana?
How nice...just how nice....
Mom takes her veiny hand. Nana smiles at her daughter, some clarity seeping into her cloudy blue eyes.
Millie Prosen (Nana), the original potica baker.
Knead for 15 minutes, adding flour by tablespoonful as needed until dough is a smooth ball rolling around the bowl without leaving shaggy strands on the metal.
The Rising of the Dough:
Turn the dough out of stand mixer and into a large lightly greased bowl. Cover with wax paper and then a cotton tea towel. Set dough to rise. 2 hours.
Nibble chocolate. Brew more coffee. Break into the Frangelico.
the risen dough.
Stay tuned for Part II of this arduous potica process, beginning with preparing the fillings.
What kinds of Christmas baking traditions do you keep?
Curious to know the secret ingredient in vegan potica? I may just spill it one of these days…
Happy December!
-Jordan xoxo