Great British Bake Off: Povitica

Episode 8: Advanced Dough

Recipe (Technical Challenge): Povitica

Ok – onto the Technical Challenge! It was Paul Hollywood’s Povitica recipe, which can be found here. It’s an Eastern European swirled and rolled yeasted loaf. Basically you make an enriched dough, roll it out thin, cover it with a layer of something yummy, roll it up tight and then twist it into a pan. Let rise, and bake! Sounds pretty simple, right? Well…not so much. One of the real tricks of this recipe is to get the dough rolled out thin enough to twist it enough times in the pan. You need to have “three” layers, so your long roll of twisted dough needs to be at least three-pan-lengths with ample room for the bend/twist. I barely got mine to the three and had to massage the long tube of dough to get enough coverage.

This recipe was kind of a fail for me. One of the “lost in translation” thing was the yeast. Once again, I didn’t properly dissolve the yeast in liquid so I had little yeast specks all over my dough – not very attractive! And because the loaf was so dense, mine was definitely undercooked. 😦 *cue sounds of sad trombone* To me, I would prefer to do a chocolate babka or cinnamon raisin swirl bread but – it is the Technical Challenge so I gotta do as they say.

I had a fun time rolling out the dough on my holiday-themed tablecloth!

Overall: 3/10

Up next…the LAST of my Great British Bake Off challenges!