Living the 7th

It is funny how you stumble across memories you’d thought you’d forgotten.  Mom was asking me the other day if I was ever going to make her that “Pinwheel Christmas Bread” again.

She’d gone to Georgia on vacation and brought me a big bag of pecan meal. I had found a bread recipe somewhere and decided to use the nut meal up and give it to my parents for the holidays.  Both of them liked it a lot.  Then I lost the recipe.

Recently I was cruising my allrecipes.com account and found I’d submitted it to the website! At the time of submission,  I couldn’t remember where I had found it originally and I had wanted to submit it to the website so I could recall it when I wanted it again.

All this time it has been in my private recipe folder (which I never check) because it was still pending review. I can’t believe it is still pending review nearly 5 years later either!

So the recipe found at long last!  I sent it to mom and told her if she bought the goods I’d come over and make it.  She’s never quite gotten the hang of yeast breads.

This thing takes a while to rise so Mom was telling me about another “lost recipe” she’s been trying to find.  Some kind of creamy filling bread she once read about somewhere. So we were sitting at the kitchen table and I started helping her search in her cookbooks..

Voila! In this 1983 church cookbook my grandfather’s cousin Leona had given my mother was the very same POTICA recipe I thought I lost.

So all the while that mom was bugging me to make her the bread and I said I couldn’t because I lost the recipe? That recipe was on her kitchen counter.  When I saw it, I remembered I had copied it out long hand on scrap paper to take home to try out.

My potica is a brown sugar and pecan pinwheel bread — a variation on the potica that has walnuts instead.  When sliced open, it has spirals. It’s double rise — first 2 hours then 1 hour so best made on a day you plan to be doing other things while waiting.

Prep Time: 195 min
Cook Time: 45 min
Ready In: 240 min

INGREDIENTS

Dough:

• 1 envelope yeast
• 1/4 cp water
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup shortening (ex: Crisco)
• 3 1/2 – 3-3/4 cup white flour

Filling:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/4 cup ground pecans

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, mix first eight ingredients.  Knead until smooth and elastic. Allow to rise for 2 hours.

2. Punch dough down and let rise again for 15 minutes.

3. In the meantime, mix remaining ingredients for filling.

4. Divide dough in half. Roll out both halves until very thin and spread each sheet with half of pecan filling. Roll up like a pinwheel and place on greased cookie sheet. Allow to rise for 60 min.

5. Brush with egg wash if using. Bake for 45 min at 350 deg.