And here is the last of the three recipes from Alena’s mom kitchen. This time, it’s for little round cookies or koláčiky. This treat shares the sweet dough with the apricot cake and the poppy seed rolls.

Roll the dough out and then use a floured drinking glass to cut out circles (like when making pirohy).

Then top each with the sweet farmer’s cheese (tvaroh) mixture mixed with raisins (hrozienka). Move everything onto a baking sheet, and top with the flour crust.

And bake at 350F. These are making me really hungry!

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Here is another deliciously-looking recipe Ala sent in. It’s for an apricot cake, marhuľový koláč. You start it by making the same dough used to make poppy rolls.

Then roll the dough out to the size of your baking pan. Top with sweetened farmer’s cheese.

Top with apricots and the topping made out of flour.

Finally bake at 350F for about 30 minutes. Enjoy!

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If you have visited Slovakia, you surely came across little slightly-curved mini baguettes called rožky. These baked bread rolls are a HUGE part of Slovak cuisine. I have no statistics to back this up, but I suspect Slovaks get at least half of their bread in the form of rožky (plural of rožok). In this recipe, I show you how you too can bake them at home. The recipe is based on an article on SME.sk, titled “Bake your own bread rolls, everyone can do it!”. Very true, indeed. Baking these bread rolls is really easy, and you don’t need any fancy bread machine.

Here is all you’ll need: flour, milk, oil, yeast, salt and sugar.

Combine all the ingredients in a container. Knead the dough by hand, or with a food processor with attached dough hooks. I have this handy mixer, so I used that a bit. But I don’t know if it was really easier on my hands. The hand-held gizmo produced quite a bit of torque which my wrist had to compensate form. So, if you are planning on doing much baking and cooking, you should get a stationary dough mixer, like the one shown in the video on the SME recipe page. The dough is done when it becomes smooth and elastic.

Let the dough rise, covered, for about 2 hours, until it doubles in size. I placed it in a warm oven; this worked great. Form the dough into a loaf and cut it in half.

Take each half and roll it out into a circle about 4mm thick. Make sure to flip the dough while rolling to get it smooth on both sides. Cut the circle into four sections. You can use a knife, but if you can find them, get one of these dough cutters. They work great! Now, let’s make rožky using the following four-step process. First, grab the triangle by the “ears” and stretch them out a bit. Fold the ears over. Second, tuck the long end over and roll up. Third, continue rolling with the palm of one or both hands. Fourth, there really isn’t a fourth step. Just finish rolling and place the tube onto a greased baking pan, the tail piece down.

Let them sit in the baking pan for about 20 minutes, so they rise again. I gave the rolls a little bend too, to make them look more like rožky you would find in a bakery shop. In the mean time, preheat the oven to 375F. Bake in the middle for about 20 minutes, until they turn golden brown. Ah, there is nothing like home-baked bread! Slightly crunchy on the outside, yet fluffy on the inside.

Next make some Parisian salad to go with them.

If you compare my rožky with those you will find in Slovakia, you will see that mine are much more twisty-looking. I am not sure why this is – and since this was my first time ever trying this method, I have not yet had a chance to experiment. The issue is that the individual layers should have fused together. Since they didn’t, I suspect my dough was tad too stiff. I wasn’t very precise with the measurements, so perhaps I had just a bit too much flour, or slightly too little liquid. I will report any findings – I will definitely be baking these again. And in the mean time, feel free to share your experiences by leaving a comment.

Update May 11th, 2010

I figured I give rožky another try, and boy, did this second batch turn out great! Although still not as pretty as you would find in a bakery, the taste was amazing! Lightly crunchy on the outside and fluffily soft on the inside.

The main thing I did different this time is that I let the tubes rise an extra time, about an hour, before baking. You can see how they doubled in the photos below. I also let the dough rise overnight in a fridge, but I don’t think this made any difference. Turns out, you can make the dough the night before, let it sit overnight in the fridge, and in the morning have dough ready for baking.

Here you can see how much the dough increases in size.

I baked them for about 15 minutes at 375F. Although you can’t tell from the photo, these rolls are about twice the size of the ones from the first batch. The baking sheet is much larger.

One great thing to do with these rolls is to top them with butter and jam and make a quick mid-afternoon snack.

Update January 16th, 2011

And one more update. This time they are looking much more like the way they are supposed to. It’s partly because I let the dough rise for over a day, not on purpose but because of various social commitments that got in the way of baking. These were nice and fluffy. By the way, If you have to let the dough rise for a long time like this, you can sprinkle flour over the top to keep it from drying up, and also place it in the fridge to slow down the yeast activity and to prevent the dough from going sour.

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Is there anything more delicious than freshly baked bread, still warm to melt the butter, sprinkled with bit of salt?

I don’t think so. And the Slavs of the past shared this view, since bread and salt (chlieb a soľ) became the universal gift offered to visitors through out all Slavic lands. Bread symbolizes life, while salt stands for health (from a Slovak blog). One really famous Slovak fairy tales even tells a story of a king who destroyed all salt in his kingdom, and salt became more precious than gold. Bread and salt, two simple staples, yet so full of meaning, are offered to all foreign dignitaries visiting the land.

Bread can be made of variety of flour. The most common is white or all-purpose flour consisting of milled wheat (pšenica). But many other cereals besides wheat are used in making of bread. These include barley (jačmeň) and my favorite grain, rye (raž). I was very happy to find a bag of rye flour (ražná múka) in my local Giant (grocery chain). Then, when I found myself without bread about a week later, I figured I’ll give it a shot. I combined the flour, yeast, worked the dough and … disaster! I realized, post-fact, that rye bread is actually not made primarily of rye flour. The resulting bread was extremely dense. It felt like a brick. But, it actually tasted quite good (and healthy) and kept for a while. It never became hard, I finally had to dispose of it when it started getting moldy.

Few days later I decided to try again. This time I used about equal amounts of rye and white flour. Not knowing how the bread will turn out (this was just my second time ever baking bread, not counting the one time I helped my grandma), I decided against taking photos. Too bad, because it was great! The loaf was gone in about a day, and hence came another opportunity to bake more bread. Here are the steps again. This bread was prepared without any specific recipe, I instead just followed my grandma’s lesson and added spices I like, such as caraway seeds, basil and olive oil.

Here is what you will need. I used just a half packet of yeast. I wanted to save some money, since each packet costs about a buck – and I was making just one loaf.

Prepare the yeast culture

Add the yeast (kvások) to lukewarm milk (mlieko) and also add some two spoons of sugar (cukor). Whisk well to give the yeast plenty of air (vzduch).

So what if the yeast is slow to rise? You can give it a little nudge by placing the bowl over a pot containing hot water. Just make sure to turn the heat off so you don’t end up accidentally cooking the little critters.

Mix the ingredients

In the meantime, in a large bowl combine about equal amounts of rye and all-purpose flour. I was making just a single loaf so I used about two cups each – but this is just an estimate. I made everything “by eye”. Add in some caraway seeds (rasca) and basil (bazalka, or any other spices you like, rosemary would probably work great). I added about a teaspoon each, but again this was done by eye only. Finally, add plenty of salt (soľ). Pour in the yeast mixture. Use your hands to mix everything together.

You will most likely end up with individual flour globules, since there won’t be enough liquid. Add bit of lukewarm water (voda), and mix in until you get a single solid block. You may be amazed by just how little water is actually needed. This is where I started kneading the dough. But, the consistency will very likely still be quite granular, so add bit more water…

… or slightly more than a bit. I had a little accident as I overestimated the amount needed. My nice block turned into mud! Disaster? No, not at all. If this happens, simply keep mixing the “mud” until most of the water is absorbed. It’s quite amazing just how much water flour can take in. Still, in the end, my dough was still too gooey so I added more all-purpose flour. Again, form everything into a single block and continue kneading. Here I found it helpful to line the sides of the bowl with flour. This way the dough picked up more flour as it needed. It also keeps the dough from sticking.

Knead the dough

The purpose of kneading the bread is two fold. First, kneading assures that all the ingredients are evenly distributed. Secondly, this mechanical process helps unfold the protein chains contained in the flour, called gluten. These proteins give the dough the stiffness and the elasticity needed to prevent it from collapsing during rising. To knead bread, take the back of your wrist and push out. Then fold the dough over, turn 90^o, and repeat.

Or just watch the video… Do this until you get tired of it, but at least for 10 minutes. You will see the dough become elastic and you should start seeing it rise. You will notice little puffed up air pockets under your wrist.

Prove, form and bake

Once you are happy with it (or tired of kneading), form the dough into a ball. Dust the sides of your bowl with flour. Also sprinkle some flour on the dough ball. Cover, to keep draft away, and let rise for an hour or two (I let it sit for almost 2 hours). Yeast likes it warm. You can help it by placing the dough on top of a pot of hot water, similar to what was done to get the yeast culture going. Again, make sure the stove is not on.

I waited until the dough felt quite puffy. Note, since rye flour is rather dense, this dough will not rise as much as one consisting of only white flour.

Scoop out the dough onto a flour-dusted board. Here I kneaded the dough few more times to make sure that no large air pockets lurked inside. I then started forming it into a loaf by grabbing it on both sides and turning over. I couldn’t completely capture this as I needed one hand to operate the camera, but you can still see the indentation left by my right hand. What you are trying to do here is to work out any non-uniformities and work the dough into a single unit with no non-sticky flour folds in it. These folds tend to open up during baking – as also happened in my case. But it’s not really a big deal. A trick I learned after the fact is to stretch the dough out and fold it over like an envelope. You then form it into the loaf and bake it the folded side down. Place the loaf into a baking pan. Brush on some oil (olej, I used olive oil) and sprinkle on little flour to give the bread the rustic look.

Let rest for about 15 minutes. This is important as it gives the bread a chance to regain some of the puffiness lost during shaping. Use this time to preheat the oven to 375F. Bake on the bottom rack, otherwise the bottom crust will be too soft. Bake for about an hour, until the crust looks crunchy. Do not open the stove until the crust sets. You can test if the bread is done by testing if it sounds hollow when you tap on it – it should. Finally, turn the oven off and let the bread cool on the wire rack. If you want, you can brush on water on the baked crust to soften it. I didn’t do this as I like my bread crunchy. Wait for the bread to cool before cutting. This will take a while, maybe even an hour.

And enjoy freshly home-baked bread…

And that’s it. It’s actually quite easy to bake your own bread. It turned out great, although my previous attempt (picture on the right) had a little nicer look to it, I think. I coated the bread with slightly too much flour, plus the crust cracked more than I would have liked. Still, the taste was amazing. Enjoy!

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In Slovakia, we make this amazing bacon-flavored biscuit (pagáč) called škvarkovník. The name is derived for the word for bacon bits, škvarky. When done properly, the biscuits are extremely fluffy and the dough comes apart in layers. I actually like to eat them like that, layer-by-layer.

To make these biscuits, you will need ground up bacon bits. These are quite easy to find in Slovakia. They come in a margarine-sized tub, as shown in the photos below. However, I don’t know if anything like this available in the States. You can probably start off by buying bacon bits and grinding them up yourself.

As with any leavened dough, start off by preparing the yeast culture, kvások. This is done by dissolving the packet of yeast in luke-warm milk and adding about a teaspoon of sugar. Once it bubbles up (as in the recipe for knedla), add it to your flour (múka). Then add about two table spoons worth of bacon bits (škvarky) cooked with butter (masľo). Add a dash of salt and enough water (voda) to end up with dough having the consistency shown on the right.

Next let the dough rise. This will take somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the temperature of your room. My grandma fills a pot with hot water, and places the dough on top of it to speed up the process. Roll the dough out to a pancake approximately the width of your finger. Use a pastry brush (one made out of goose feathers works great!) to spread on a layer of bacon bits dissolved with butter.

Fold the outer end over one third of the way. Spread the bacon sauce onto this side and fold the bottom third over.

You now have a dough rectangle containing two layers of the bacon sauce. Spread on another layer on top and then roll the dough into a cylinder.

Take this cylinder and hand pat it down into a circular shape. Then take a rolling pin and roll the dough out to about an inch thick. Don’t forget to work on a surface dusted with flour and to dust the top of the dough to keep the pin from sticking. Take a drinking glass and also stick it in flour. Use a circular motion to cut out the biscuits. This is identical to making pierogi.

Place the biscuits onto a greased baking pan. Let rise for about 20 minutes. In the mean time, preheat your oven. My grandma likes to bake them on the bottom and they took only about 20 minutes in her wood burning stove. Serve pagáče as a snack or instead of bread with soups.

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