greybeard
Well-known member
j_20":3w59o7gr said:
I used this recipe the first time:
http://www.11alive.com/article/news/cow ... -547530480
2nd time I made them, instead of making up the dough from scratch, I used the following product.
Downside was it wasn't as buttery as the home made dough.
I took 2 loaves from the package, laid them frozen, on a big platter and covered them with saranwrap I had sprayed with non-stick cooking oil..that's to keep the dough from drying out and the saranwrap from sticking to the dough.
DO cover them completely, but loosely..make the saranwarp bigger than the frozen loaf because each one is going to rise up x2 it's size in about 5-6 hrs. If you don't use more wrap than the frozen loaf, most of the loaf will be exposed to outside air and the dough will dry out and form a hard skin.
[before you start rolling and cutting the dough:
Have your filling ready. You can use canned pie filling..I did with the blue berries and the strawberries and peach filling this 2nd time.
It worked fine.
Make the posipka up before hand.
Use REAL butter for the posipka. You can make posipka with a hand mixer or just use your hands and fingers.
(Posipka (Kolache topping) 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup flour 1/3 cup melted butter Mix together until crumbly.)
Have either a butter/milk/sugar wash ready or a butter/sugar/milk/beaten egg wash ready.
(if stick butter for the wash, warm it in microwave until just liquid, but not so hot it cooks the egg.)
Lots of people leave the egg out and just mix up sugar milk and butter.
(I added some brown sugar to both the posipka and the wash to make up for the store bought dough not being as sweet as the home made dough) ]
When the loaf(es) have doubled in size ONE TIME, punch it down and knead it lightly & just grab a chunk of it..it's going to be elastic. Flour your hands good, plop the gob of dough on a floured board and roll it out to between 3/8-1/2 thickness. Going to be hard to roll as it will be stretchy. Then, cut out 2 1/2" circles and place them about 1 1/2" apart on a sprayed baking sheet. Grab another gob and repeat, till all the dough is used. (you can gather the little leftover pieces and ball them and re-roll them out to cut. )
When the sheet is full, cover the whole thing with a clean cloth and let it sit on your kitchen counter/table for about an hour..those circles will rise some more, in height and diameter.
They will look sort of like this right before you make the indentations--I had rolled them out a lot flatter an hour before this picture.
Once risen up some, Make your indentations at this time, and make them big and deep but no hole all the way thru the dough. As the recipe said, should look like a kid's inflatable round wading pool.
Spoon in the filling, tho if I do it with the store bought dough again, I'll do the butter/milk/egg wash all over the dough circles right before I spoon on the topping, instead of just on the outer part of the circle--adds more buttery taste.
Spoon the filling in pretty quickly and don't be afraid to heap it up. The 2nd batch I made, to each circle, I spooned on about 1/2 again as much filling as you see in this picture:
You do it quick so the wash is still sticky, which holds the posipka in place. Posipka goes on right before you put 'em in the oven.
My sister, who is married to a Bohemian, (his parents "came over from the old country" ) says she always just grabbed some dough, formed it in a little ball, and plopped it down on the cookie sheet, then mashed it down with her hands flat instead of all that rolling and cutting out. My dough both times, was so elastic, it didn't work that way..I had to roll it out.
Good luck.....now you got me wanting to make some more with the other 3 frozen loaves..
