Pass the Povitica, Please

The timing of this challenge did not turn out to be totally opportune for us, but we made the best of it -- and turned out a tasty result. I even bust out TJ's good camera to take some nicer-than-usual shots.

We had originally intended to carve pumpkins while baking but that plan was abandoned, much to Cat's chagrin. Nonetheless, and in spite of the 80-degree, sunny San Francisco weather, we stayed in the Halloween spirit while the dough was rising by watching a "classic":

The dough was pretty easy to make. We halved the original recipe to make just two loaves -- one for each of us.

We were a bit nervous about rolling it out without a sheet underneath -- a new technique for us -- but neither Sara nor I had something that would've worked and that we wanted to get dough all over. In the end, it was pretty easy to roll it out very thin without a sheet.

Instead of the chocolate filling in the challenge, we opted for a more seasonal pumpkin-pie-spiced filling. I couldn't even tell you how much spice we put in, but suffice it to say, it was a LOT. And the filling turned out to be quite yummy, even though I totally dropped the ball and forgot to get the actual *pumpkin* that we originally intended to include in it. We had to taste it a lot to be sure it was OK.

Rolling it up into the log was fun. Note the glasses of pumpkin beer in the background. Yum yum.

There's the first finished log.

Not the best picture, but that's one of the loaves rolled snake-like into the bread pan.

And the gorgeous finished product. The eggwash made it especially beautiful. And the interior looked pretty amazing, too. It didn't have the very defined striations that using cocoa powder might've produced, since our filling was a lighter brown, but it was still lovely. And delicious.

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!


We modified the original filling recipe, leaving out the cocoa powder in the recipe and adding in a lot of pumpkin pie spice.