Croatianplumdumplingsknedliodsljiva Recipes

GRANDMA'S POVITISA (PO-VUH-TEET-ZUH) POVITICA CROATIAN NUT BREAD

Steps:

• Combine warm water and yeast together in a large bowl. Let stand until yeast softens and begins to form a creamy foam, about 5 minutes.
• Stir 3/4 cup lukewarm milk, white sugar, shortening, 1 egg, and salt into yeast mixture. Mix flour into yeast mixture until a soft, easy to handle dough forms.
• Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and let stand for 10 minutes. Knead dough until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Form dough into a ball.
• Place dough in a large, lightly-oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover bowl with a damp towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, or until a hole remains when your finger is pressed deeply into the dough, about 2 hours.
• Punch down dough and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Shape into ball and let dough rest for 15 minutes.
• Beat brown sugar, butter, and 1 egg together in a bowl until creamy. Add 1/4 cup milk, vanilla extract, and lemon extract; stir until smooth. Stir walnuts into the filling mixture until walnuts are completely incorporated.
• Roll dough on a large, floured cloth into a 20x30-inch rectangle. Spread walnut filling evenly over the top of the dough, spreading to the edges. Roll the rectangle up along the long edge like a jelly roll and pinch edges to seal. Coil the roll into a snail-shape.
• Grease a 9x13x2-inch baking sheet. Place shaped dough on the prepared sheet and let rise until an impression remains when the dough is gently pressed, about 1 hour.
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
• Bake in the preheated oven until the top is golden brown, 40 to 45 minutes.

CROATIAN PLUM DUMPLINGS (KNEDLI OD SLJIVA)

Steps:

• Cook potato in skin until soft (like for potato salad). When ready peal the skin and mash potato on flat surface. Be careful it is very hot.
• Add butter (crush it a bit to speed melting), flour, semolina, nutmeg and salt. Make it into a dough, and when cools it a bit add two eggs. You will think now that you make a big mistake because it will turn very wet, but you have to be firm and continue to make dough. It is OK to add more flour.
• The right amount of flour will be clear to you after you make this several times, this is amount I usually put. It also depends on quality of potato; some are softer than others. When the dough is firm, but soft enough, make the dumplings.
• Cut a piece of dough and roll around cleaned and washed plum. The dough shouldn't be more than 1 cm thick. If you make it without plum stone, break the plum into half, remove the stone and put a sugar cube instead. After that, do as previously mention.
• At this point you can freeze the whole amount of dumplings, but do it on flat surface making sure they don't touch. After they freeze, you can put them in a bag.
• If you want to cook them right away, use large pot, fill with water up to 2/3 and add some oil. When water boils, put the dumplings into the water and cook until they start to float on the surface. You may use a toothpick to check if they are soft.
• In the meantime melt butter in a frying pan and fry some breadcrumbs. When removing dumplings from the pot put them into hot butter with breadcrumbs and fry them just a bit to reduce surplus of water.
• You may serve them as a desert, but also as a lunch, of course amount of dumplings will differ in both cases.
• When you open the dumplings, you may put some sugar over it and also some grounded cinnamon. Some people add sour cream over dumplings, but I don't like it that way.

CROATIAN BREAD DUMPLINGS

Steps:

• Remove crust from bread. Cut the rest of bread into small cubes and dry them in oven. They must become crunchy.
• Make dough mixing milk, flour, eggs, parmesan and salt. Pour over crunchy bread.
• Finely mince onion. Cut bacon into small pieces and fry them but not too much. Bacon will drain some lard, so add oil and sauté onion until becomes translucent. Add parsley leaves and bacon and put it into dough.
• Mix well and leave at least half an hour in refrigerator.
• Make balls with your hand. They must be not larger than tenis balls. To do it better, put your hands in cold water before you form each ball. Put balls into boiling water and cook about 20 minutes. The balls must float, that is the indication they are done.
• Before serving fry in a frying pan some breadcrumbs on butter. Put bread balls on hot butter just for few seconds to cover them with breadcrumbs. For four persons reduce amount of ingredients to 1/4.