Potica (Slovenian Walnut Roll)
Potica (poh-TEET-sah), also known as povitica (poh-vee-TEET-sah), is a yeast-raised dough rolled around a variety of fillings – sweet or savory – and then baked as a roll or in a cake pan or loaf pan. Its name derives from the Slovenian word poviti, which means ‘to wrap in.’ This is a consolidation of 16 recipes found in Mom’s recipe cards. All of the 16 recipes were very similar, only minor differences. The result tasted like the Potica that Grandma Markum made.
Servings
1very large roll
Servings
1very large roll
Ingredients
Yeast
Dough
Filling
Added While Rolling
Instructions
Yeast
  1. Dissolve yeast in milk; add sugar and combine. Cover and let stand in warm place, about 10 minutes
Dough
  1. Scald milk; add butter. Cool to lukewarm.
  2. In a small electric mixing bowl, beat egg yolks, sugar, salt and vanilla until lemon colored.
  3. In a large bowl, sift 3 cups of flour.
  4. Pour mixture of prepared yeast, milk butter, eggs and sugar into mixing bowl with 3 cups of flour; beat with an electric mixer until smooth and elastic. Then keep adding flour and mixing with a wooden spoon until the dough can be handled without sticking. The flour amount is approximate. Stop adding flour when the dough is soft and manageable; too much flour will make the potica heavy.
  5. Place on a floured board and knead for about 5-15 minutes, adding flour as needed, to make a non-sticking dough.
  6. Place dough in a well greased bowl and also grease top of the dough. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place for about 1 to 2 hours until double in bulk and until a hole remains when your finger is pressed into the dough. Punch down, let rise again for 30 minutes.
Filling
  1. Grind walnuts in a food chopper with the finest blade or preferably a food processor to get finer walnuts. Melt butter in a large sauce pan, add milk and sugar; cook to rolling boil, taking care not to let it boil over.
  2. Pour hot mixture over walnuts, add vanilla. Mix thoroughly and let cool.
  3. Let the walnut filling cool before adding the beaten egg whites, or the whites may deflate or cook. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into cooled nut mixture.
Rolling
  1. Roll out dough on a table covered with cloth, well sprinkled with flour. (This amount of dough can be rolled out to about 50 x 32 inches, but doesn’t have to be.)
  2. Spread cooled filling over entire dough evenly. Add a little more milk if the mixture isn’t spreadable.
  3. Sprinkle with cinnamon and a generous amount of raisins.
  4. Start rolling up dough by hand (jelly roll fashion) from the wide side, stretching dough slightly with each roll. Keep side edges as even as possible. Prick roll about every several turns with a thin knitting needle or cake tester to help eliminate air pockets. Continue rolling by hand to the opposite edge.
  5. Seal well by moistening edges and pinching edges of dough.
  6. If making into smaller loaves, cut to desired lengths with the edge of a flat plate. Seal ends more securely by gently pulling dough down to cover ends and tucking underneath when placed in the pan.
  7. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about an hour.
Baking
  1. Bake large roll in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours, 1 hour for smaller rolls, until medium brown. Bake until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Bake to an internal temperature of somewhere between 190 and 200° F.
  2. If a glossy top is desired, brush each loaf with one egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon of milk 15 minutes before potica is done.
  3. While still warm, rub top with butter.
The total time estimate for making this is about 6.5 hours.
  1. Enjoy!