Cottage Cheese Buns (Tvarohové Buchty)
Ingredients: 400g flour, 1 egg, 3 yolks, 50g powdered sugar, 1 stick of butter, ground lemon peel, 2dl milk, salt, extra butter for greasing
Prep time: 30 minutes to make dough, several hours to let dough rise, at least half an hour to make the buns, 1 hour for baking
I am not sure how to translate the word buchty. Buns comes probably the closest, although when I think of buns, I tend to think of hamburger buns. But I definitely know how to describe them: delicious! In Slovakia, we don’t bake cookies. Instead, we bake buchty. So when you visit your grandma, she will always treat you with a sheet of freshly baked buchty. They are filled with a variety of fillings, but cottage cheese (tvaroh) is the most uniquely Slovak.
Making the dough
Start by prepping yeast by combing little bit of warm milk (fridge milk microwaved for about 10 seconds) with one teaspoon of sugar and one packet of rapid rise yeast. You can see pictures of this step in the recipe for steamed dumpling (knedľa). Next find a big pot, and mix in all the ingredients to make the dough.
Combine flour, powdered sugar, one egg and 3 yolks. Also add little bit of grated lemon peel (lemon zest). The original recipe called for peel from half a lemon. I thought this would make the buns too lemony so I added not even a quarter. I don’t think my grandmother ads any lemon at all. Also melt one stick of butter (microwave works fine) and add it along with a dash of salt and some milk. I prefer to start with less milk and add more as needed.
Next add the yeast (it should be bubbled up) and work the dough for some 15 minutes until you get a nice smooth texture. Keep adding more milk as needed. The final dough should be only slightly sticky. You should be able to roll it into a ball without having it stick to the pot.
Cover, and let sit in a warm place for several hours. The dough should rise nicely.
Prepare the filling
Preparing the filling is easy! Simply combine approximately equal parts of powdered sugar and fine-curd cottage cheese. Mix well.
Filling the buns (buchty)
You will need a deep (casserole-type) baking pan. Grease it generously with melted butter using a pastry brush.
Now here comes the tricky part: making buchty. The recipe book said to cut out a square and form it into a bun shape. I wasn’t quite clear how to go about this so I called my grandma for more instructions. She told me to cut out squares or rectangles about the size of my palm and then pinch them together. With this info, I went ahead and improvised. I took me few practice rounds, but I think I finally got the method down.
Dust a wooden board and a pin roller with flour. Roll out a portion of the dough until it is about half a centimeter thick. Cut a piece about the size of your palm.
Next use your hands to stretch out the dough. It should be fairly elastic. Add about two teaspoons worth of filling. This next part is tricky. You want to fold the piece over to make a long rectangle. However, make sure the filling doesn’t get to the joint area, otherwise the dough will not stick together. It helps if you keep stretching the dough out as you fold it over.
UPDATE 2/15/10: There is a much easier way to fill buchty, by rolling them. Please see the updated recipe for buchty.
Next pinch the top seal together and also pinch the two ends closed. Then gently form the bun into a brick shape.
Closely stack the buns on the baking sheet, joint area on the bottom. Generously grease the contact areas with butter. Besides cottage cheese, you can also use fruit filling. I made three kinds of buchty: cottage cheese, apricot jam, and raspberry preserve. Plum jam is also very popular in Slovakia.
Baking
My grandma said she bakes buchty on “2″ for 20 minutes and then on “3″ until they turn pink. I had no idea what temperatures these corresponded to, so I baked them at 275F and 325F.
Heat up the oven only once you are done making the buns. This will let the dough rest for few minutes. I started by baking at 275F for 20 minutes. I then increased the temperature to 325F until the tops started turning light brown. I then lowered the temperature down to 275F until they were nicely brown on top. All together, baking took about an hour. Sprinkle buchty with powdered sugar once they cool off a bit. Separate them carefully with your hands.
And there you have it. I didn’t grease the buns sufficiently, and some of them stuck together. This resulted in some of the jam leaking out as I tried to pull them apart. In the end, my buchty tasted great, although they were bit more messy to eat than my grandma’s. Still I was very happy with the outcome since this was my first serious baking attempt. You can see in the picture on the right how buchty should look when they are made right. That picture was taken at my grandma’s house during my last visit. And if you are looking for another sweet Slovak delicacy, check out the recipe for plum dumplings (slivkové knedle).
No tak teda – toto je teda vyborne! Tie buchty teda vyzeraju skvele a na prvy krat je to vinikajuci uspech!
You can use poppy seeds if you like instead of the
cottage cheese or fruit filling. You can mix poppy seeds with sugar and use it as a filling or sprinkle the buns with this mixture.
omg!!!!!! tak by som si dala mnaaaam!
Lubos, tak veru vyzeraju a urcite chutili super.
Kedy sa ides “vydavat”
Yeah, yeah, very funny!!!
This is exactly why I tried to get my female friends to send me pictures of their baked goods, but so far I found no takers.
I have tasted the cottage cheese and apricot jam buns. tasted pretty good. not too sweet and felt like having more.
Wow – these were delicious! They taste very similar to the sweet bread my grandmother used to make for Easter. Thanks for the recipe!
Ja sice moc nevypekam – ale buchty obcas robim. Moja dcera ich od malicka volala “tie kolace co sa objimaju”.
Ake “yeast” pouzivas? Ja sa roky-rokuce snazim zohnat nase “slovenske” kvasnice a vraj by v niektorom z obchodov zdravej vyzivy mali byt – ale nikdy som nic nenasla. A musim priznat, ze kvasnice su lepsie ako prasok…alebo nie?
Hi Alena, thanks for all your comments! Let’s see, I have not yet experimented with different yeasts. But this is a good idea. I know from my past brief experience with brewing beer that yeast does matter quite a bit. I guess I was not even aware that you can buy different baking yeasts. I have a pretty simple philosophy when it comes to cooking. I buy the simplest ingredients and don’t worry about it too much. All my recipes to date were prepared with all-purpose flour and the quick-rise yeast packets. I guess this is why I am no chef, but just a guy cooking his dinner.
Some supermarkets in US carry “cake yeast” – just like Czech “kvasnice”. Unfortunately I have never seen them yet but I know they are available in certain areas in dairy departments.
For filling – again our store doesn’t sell it but many people report success in their supermarkets: “farmer’s cheese” instead of “cottage cheese” looks and tastes more like “tvaroh”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_cheese
For poppy seed feeling in baked goods you can try bakery section in most supermarkets (even Super Target carries this here) or order online:
SOLO poppy seed filling – it is a quite sweet though for “buns”
http://solofoods.com/Our_Products.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Poppy-Seed-Filling-12-5oz/dp/B000LRH6RM
Yeah, I saw some poppy seed filling in a can in my local grocery store. But the first (or if not first then definitely second) ingredient was sugar, so I decided to skip that.
LOL – what a face the website assigned to me
)) like an avatar!
I have also found this filling online but never ordered and tried it yet… I wonder if it is possibly less sweet:
http://www.nutsonline.com/cookingbaking/fillings/poppy-seed.html?gclid=CI75_azT050CFSDxDAodP20Msg
Martina mentioned that the filling which she found online is too sweet …. yes, it is true. She may mix it with cottage cheese – 1/2 poppy seed and 1/2 cottage cheese. I think it will work and it will be very good. Some people in Slovakia do it that way.
I’m going to try to make these buchty things tomorrow but I wanted to use real farmer’s cheese. So, I used a recipe for farmer’s cheese (link below), which sounded a lot like something my Slovak-American grandmother used to make, called hrutka. I guess it’s similar but hrutka includes eggs, sugar and raisins. The farmer’s cheese was extremely easy to make and came out well. Instead of a lemon, I poured some white vinegar into the milk and it curdled quickly. I then poured it into cheesecloth and hung it over my sink to drain. My babka would be very proud.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/home-made-farmers-cheese/Detail.aspx
This is great! I definitely have to try this.
Here’s how my mother made these:
8 ounces Cottage cheesee–drain
1/4 c. raisins– Soak raisins in warm water for a few hours to plump them, drain.
Mix the cottage cheese, raisins, one egg,8 ounces of sugar (1 cup)
Roll the dough into a rectangle, cut into 4 x 4 squares.
Put a spoonful of filling in the center. Brush the outer edges of the dough square with water, draw up the opposite 4 edges diagonally into the middle and pinch together. Let them rise, then bake.
Thanks for sharing!
does anyone ever remember these buns being filled with saute’d cabbage? My Mother made something similar & used the cabbage filling & also a sweet cheese filling. She would make the dough & cut into 4 in. sq’s like Marilyn said & add the filling & pinch the corners together in the middle & then bake. Powdered sugar added to them when they were done baking. Can’t remember actual Slovak name for them, we just called them Cabbage Cakes” Cheese cakes” ..oy.. anyone?
Hi Ed, these types of buns are always sweet. However, there is something called kapustník, which roughly translates as something made of cabbage (kapusta). It is basically bread which has cabbage mixed in it. It’s quite tasty. I’ll try to make it in the near future and post the recipe.
PS: I just checked my recipe book, and it has the cabbage mixed with powdered sugar and cinnamon! So you are right, it is quite similar to buchty. My grandma doesn’t make it like that, but I’ll try this variation when I make it.
Hey Lubos, Thank you so much for answering. Looking forward to possibly seeing this recipe tried out on your website & having the recipe. Thanks again.