December is the month of Christmas Lent or Nativity Fast. That is a 40 day of spiritual preparation which the Serbian Orthodox Church follows, starting November 28th and ending on Christmas Eve January 6th. This time of reflection, prayers and good deeds also assumes consumption of food that excludes any animal based protein and fats.
Today’s recipe covers baking a lenten bread or “pogacha” that is commonly used for celebration of Slavas that fall during the lenten period. A Slava is a celebration of a family’s patron saint’s day.
I used this pogacha recipe over the last couple of years for our family Slava, patron saint Nicholas which falls on December 19th. As today’s post is on December 19th, I would like to wish everyone celebrating Saint Nicholas a Happy Slava!
It is a very nice and easy to do recipe that yields a very tender bread with a wonderful scent. Bread decoration is optional and you can make it as simple or as elaborate you like. To make it more interesting I somewhat change the number and design of ornaments every year.
If you have ever baked any bread on your own, this recipe shouldn’t cause you any difficulties. There are no tricks nor special techniques. If I would have to point one item to pay attention to that would be the internal temperature of the baked bread. I advise you to not rely solely on visual clues nor time to determine when the bread is baked. Instead use simple thermometer inserted in the center of the bread. Once the thermometer reads 90ºC (194ºF) the bread is baked. This approach will never fail to produce desired results!
The recipe has been adopted from Minjina Kuhinjica.
| Prep Time | 15 min |
| Cook Time | 1 hr |
| Passive Time | 1.25 hr |
| Servings |
bread
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- 750 g all purpose non bleached flour sifted
- 400 ml filtered water room temperature
- 100 ml vegetable oil I used olive oil
- 1.5 tsp fine sea salt
- 4 tsp granulated sugar
- 10 g instant yeast or 14g active dry yeast
- 25 g all purpose non bleached flour
- 60 ml filtered water
- 100 g all purpose non bleached flour
- 15 g fine sea salt
- 20 g corn starch
- 70 ml filtered water
Ingredients
Dough
Bread glaze and fastener for decorative ornaments
Dough for ornaments
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- In a medium size bowl add all dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar, yeast. Stir until everything is evenly distributed.
- Make a conical depression in the middle of mixture and add water and oil. Use plastic scraper to mix ingredients until fully hydrated and dough is formed. Transfer the dough on counter and knead for 10-12 minutes or until gluten is well developed. Double check by "window pane test".
- Lightly dust with flour and cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.
- Cover bottom and sides of 22 cm (9") springform pan with parchment paper. If needed, brush on some vegetable oil on the pan walls to keep the parchment paper in place.
- Divide 1/3 of the dough and cover the rest of the dough to set aside.
- On a lightly dusted counter form 1/3 of the dough into a ball. Then using a rolling pin, roll it out in a rectangular shape, approximately 40 cm x 65 cm (16"x26").
- Use a pizza cutter or knife to cut in the middle, divide in two parts, by length. Roll each from longer side into a tight cylinder rope. Starting from the middle, both palms down, roll and stretch each cylinder rope out to about 74 cm (29").
- Intertwine two ropes, transfer to the lined springform pan. Place around pan inside perimeter, seal both ends.
- Divide the rest of the dough into 5 equal parts, use a weight scale to measure!
- Form each dough part into a tight ball.
- Place all balls in the springform pan starting with 4 balls placed in a cross shape. Once completed gently widen the space in the middle and make it big enough to insert the fifth ball. Cover and set aside at room temperature for 30-45 minutes.
- Mix together water and flour until smooth, making sure there are no clumps left.
- Mix together flour, salt, corn starch and water. Knead until the dough is formed, wrap in a plastic wrap and set aside for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 180ºC (356ºF), rack in the middle.
- Using a pastry brush lightly coat the top of the bread with the prepared glaze. Bake for 50 min-60 min or until internal temperature is 90ºC (194ºF).
- Remove bread from the oven, remove springform side ring and parchment paper. Let cool slightly until you prepare ornaments and decorations.
- Roll out the dough for ornaments to about 2 mm (3/16") thickness. Use different dough cutters to create variation of shapes. As a rule I always make 5 stamped rectangular shapes (IC XC NI KA), bird figure, book figure, grape, wheat, and flowers shapes.
- Use the glaze to brush the back of each ornament and attach to the bread.
- Return the bread to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes, until ornaments dry out.
- Remove remaining bottom plate of the springform pan and parchment paper, let the bread cool completely on a cooling rack.
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