This roll went so fast that I almost didn’t manage to take some pictures of it. Great success, the whole family liked it, so I am going to make this one again soon.
This is another Czech traditional recipe. Although you can find similar ones in the kitchens of the surrounding countries.
I love yest dough and poppy seeds filling is slowly becoming my favourite type of filling.
Definitely worth the effort!
Ingredients (for 2 rolls)
Leaven
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- 100 ml warm milk (at temperature close to a body temperature, 37ºC)
- 15 g regular yeast
- 1 tablespoon plain flour
Dough
- 50 g butter, melted but not too hot
- 50 g lard, melted but not too hot
- pinch of salt
- 250 g plain flour
- 25 g caster or powder sugar
- 1 pack vanilla sugar (if available in your store, e.g. Dr Oetker, if not you can use 12 g caster sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 egg, room temperature + 1 whisked egg for glazing
Filling
- 100 g poppy seeds
- around 180 ml milk (I started with this amount, but ended up using around 250 ml)
- 2 tablespoons caster sugar
- rum / rum essence and ground cinammon to add flavour
Directions
Make the leaven
In a small bowl, mix milk, flour and sugar. Be sure that the milk is neither too hot nor cold. It’s crucial its temperature is close to body temperature (37ºC). Add small pieces of yeast. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and put it in a warm (not too hot) place, I put it onto a wooden desk placed on a heating radiator.
After 10 or 15 minutes, the yeast should be dissolved and there should be a foam on the top of the milk. If not, wait another 15 minutes. If even then there is no foam, it means that the yeast is likely not alive. In such case, you should start again with new yeast mixture. On the pictures below, you can see how the mixture looked at the beginning (left picture) and at the end, after 30 minutes (right picture).
Make the dough
In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients for the dough. Add the leaven. Knead the dough carefully with a wooden spoon or in a kitchen robot with a dough hook. If you are doing it by hand, it can take around 15 – 20 minutes to knead the dough properly.
Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and set it in a worm place to let the dough rise for about 45 minutes – 1 hour.
Make the filling
In the meantime, prepare the poppy seeds filling.
In a teflon pan, mix milk and poppy seeds and bring it to boil. Boil slowly until the poppy seeds are soft. Add sugar and the rest of the ingredients and cook for additional 2 – 3 minutes. Add milk for the mixture to be more liquid, if needed.
Bake the rolls
Preheat oven to 180ºC (356ºF). Line a baking tray with a baking paper.
Once the dough has doubled the size, cut off around half of it. Place it on the floured surface and roll it out into a rectangle. Spread half of the poppy seeds filling over the dough, leave some border. On the longer sides of the rectangle, fold the border over the filling. Pick up the shorter side of the rectangle and roll it up. Place on the baking tray seam side down. Glaze with the whisked egg. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Once done, leave the dough rising on the tray for 15 minutes before you place it in the oven. After 15 minutes, put the tray in the oven and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.
