Povitica
As I mentioned in the previous post, Chris and I stepped it up a bit and attempted 2 bakes at the same time. That’s not to say that we put them both in the oven together, no. But, as the Spiced Orange cakes were in the oven, we started mixing up the ingredients for another bread loaf; a cocoa and walnut loaf called a Povitica. Contrary to how it’s spelled, it’s pronounced Povitiza.
This is another recipe that we found as part of our binge watching of the Great British Baking Show. This one is most definitely a dessert loaf that goes great with a cup of coffee or tea.
[Ingredients and recipe can be found here]
Technically speaking…
As we’ve been doing with most of the bakes we find on the TV show, right before we bake it, we go back and rewatch that portion of the show so it’s fresh in our mind. I also print out the recipe and instructions to hang on the cupboard door so we have them close at hand. That’s not to say that we read the instructions all the way through prior to beginning. No, we simply hop into step 1 and work our way through. To this point, that has never caused any sort of problem or made us question our process. That changed during step 5 which starts by saying, “To assemble, spread a clean bed sheet over a kitchen table and dust with flour.”
As I read that out loud, I’m pretty sure Chris and I both did double-takes. Did that really say to use a bed sheet? They certainly didn’t do that in the show. But, who are we to argue with instructions? To the linen closet we go.
For the Povitica, you have to roll out the dough, and then, using the back of your hands, stretch it to cover a 40×24 inch area. I’m not gonna lie, we didn’t get anywhere close to being able to stretch it out that far. But when we went back and re-watched the show, neither did they. So, whatever.
Once you get the dough spread out, you have to spread the mixture of cocoa, walnuts, and sugar, that has already gone through a food processor, all across the surface of the dough. This, too, was challenging as the dough is paper thin (you could literally see through it) and the mixture doesn’t exactly spread like butter. But again, we went back and watched the show and they talk about taking up to 10 minutes to spread the mixture. So we felt pretty good about our handling of that step, too.
Once the mixture is spread, you roll up the dough like a sausage and stretch it out to roughly 40 inches. You then lay it into the bread pan in a U shape, and then another U shape on top of that. When it comes out of the oven and you cut the loaf in half, you should end up with a pretty impressive looking 4 spirals.
DID WE DO THAT?
At the time of this writing, we’ve already baked a second Povitica. The first one came out so good, we wanted to eat it again. The photos below of our process were taken during the first time we baked it. However, the finished product shot is from our second attempt.
Both times we baked the Povitica, it came out great. The first time around, our spirals weren’t as good. The second time, they were much better. I think we can do even better, and I doubt it’ll be too long before we bake this one again.
Eventually, I expect we’ll stop being so surprised when the items we bake come out tasking good. But for now, we’re really enjoying the sense of wonder as to how in the heck we made something so tasty.
