#potica

pey wet pea stew with Carniolian sausage

My super easy, never fail, tarragon potica recipe

Dough (if you happen to recognise this yeah, it's the dough for cinnamon rolls from planet lepote forum, whatever, it works great =D) :

- 620g flour

- 80g sugar

- 2 packets of dry yeast

- 2 pinches of salt

- 2 eggs

- 70g butter

- 240ml milk

The first thing you'll want to do is melt the butter in the milk - stove or microwave doesn't really matter. Let the butter melt completely then leave to rest a bit (if possible outside/colder temp, you want it warm but you don't want to pour boiling milk on eggs. If not possible then you'll have to mix quickly, tbh I never let it chill because I'm a lazy impatient person and so far the eggs never cooked before, so you should be fine). Now measure out all the ingredients in a big bowl (put yeast and salt in different corners, you don't want to kill the yeast you're not a barbarian). You can put less (or more) sugar in, this is a taste thing it won't change the dough too much, I usually put less. The last thing you do is pour over the milk&butter mixture and mix. You can use a mixer or do it by hand, but mixer is easier. Don't overwork yourself, just mix until the flour is incorporated and there are no lumps. At this point it will be a bit sticky but that'll change during rising. Leave the dough in the bowl, throw a kitchen towel over the bowl and leave it be for an hour (you could also put it in a stove at like 50 degrees but kitchen top also works fine for the rise).

Filling:

- 400g (ish, one big packet and you'll have some left over) of sour cream

- 250g COLD butter (you'll have more than half left over, but it's easier if you have a whole thing) FROM FRIDGE - you need it to keep shape

- some sugar

- a fist of dried apricots (you should chop them up into small cubes)

- as much tarragon as you can find

Okay it's been an hour so take the dough to your work space, flour your work space and divide the dough in half. Oh, did I not mention, you'll get TWO poticas for the work of one y'all.

Roll out the dough really thin, spread half (ish) a pack of sour cream on it, pour some sugar over the cream (taste preference again, I usually skip this step, but if you like sweet potica then go for it), toss the apricots on there - make sure they're evenly distributed over all the surface, otherwise they will only be in some bits of the potica and that's not cool). Now you put on the tarragon and you want A LOT of it, I mean it, make the entire surface green, you never have enough tarragon. Now take COLD butter and grate it over the tarragon. Don't use the entire pack, like a quarter per potica is more than enough, but make sure it's not all in one place.

At this point it should look a bit like this:

Preferably you should have more tarragon but this was my last batch, so this is all I had =(

Now roll the potica - I'm not the cool person who can roll it by lifting the workspace, so I just roll it by hand and it's fine - you floured so it shouldn't stick but if it does, just gently put a knife or something under that part of the surface and it should be fine). Put the thing in the bundt tray and if it's too big no worries, you'll just have two slices in one slice, how cool is that?!

I use silicon trays but if you use clay ones maybe butter and flour them a bit first. Also they're going to take a bit longer to cook in clay apparently.

Repeat the process with the other half of the dough.

Throw a towel over the bundts and let it rise for the second time for like half an hourish.

Preheat the over to 180° fan.

Put the poticas in for 15 minutes. If I'm feeling fancy I put a tray of water in too, but it doesn't really matter that much. After that take them out and check on them. If they're getting too dark brown put some tin foil over. Otherwise put them back in for another 15 minutes.

Time honestly depends on your oven so look at them often and try knocking on them if you're unsure, they should sound more hollow than not. I prefer to underbake than overbake to be completely honest.

When they're done, take them out and leave them in their trays for 5 ish minutes then turn them over on a moist kitchen towel (preferably not washed with a detergent) and cover them in it. Let cool to the temperature you feel comfortable eating. You can sprinkle with icing sugar, but I skip that.