Povitica

Sweet Dough preparation:
Combine warm milk, sugar, salt, softened butter, and beaten eggs. Dissolve yeast in warm water and add to other ingredients. Add half of flour, mix well until smooth. Add flour to handle easily. Knead dough on lightly floured board. Put dough in greased bowl, cover and place in warm, draft free place until doubled in size. Punch down and let double again. Divide dough in three parts. Roll each part until very thin in rectangular shape. Spread filling, roll and twist in circular shape like a snail or cinnamon roll. Place in greased 8-inch or 9-inch loaf pans. Cover, put in warm place and let rise. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes.

Filling preparation:
In heavy pan, over medium heat, combine sugar, evaporated milk and margarine and heat. Add nuts, then beaten eggs and mix well. Boil one minutes stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add pinch of salt, cocoa and cinnamon and mix well. Let cool till just warm enough to spread.  

I can absolutely make you a promise about this recipe. If you’re willing to set aside a little time to make this bread, you are not going to believe the intoxicating aroma coming from your oven! The wonderful sweet bread scent is everything you would expect from “grandma’s kitchen” and then some. By now I’ve baked hundreds of Rescued Recipes—from the very simple 3-ingredient cookie bar to the all-day ordeal of a very complicated dessert.

This recipe for Povitica (po-vee-TEET-sah) pegged the needle on the aroma chart like none other. Besides, this particular version is so beautiful inside, tastes incredible and was an award winner in the bread category at the Kansas State Fair to boot! (That alone is worth the effort. State Fair winners are always some of the best recipes around!)

There are Croatian and Polish versions of Povitica, also known as Poticia (po-TEET-sah) and this delightful one comes to us from Roberta and Krystal Dent of Salina, Kansas. It took second place in the Fleischmann's Yeast Best-Ever Bread Competition at the Kansas State Fair and is absolutely a recipe and a technique that should never be lost!

Important Note:
Below is the Roberta and Krystal’s original recipe.
But because this recipe requires a very large table to accommodate rolling out the bread into a thin sheet, we cut this recipe (both the dough and the filling) in half, ending up with a 2 ½ foot X 18 inch sheet of bread dough.) We used one 9 X 5-inch loaf pan)