Vegan Povitica - Croatian Sweet Walnut Bread

Course: Pastry

Cuisine: Vegan

Servings: slices

Calories: 256kcal

Author: The Greedy Vegan

This vegan povitica is a great treat during the holidays. It is a stunning centrepiece for any table and very easily made.

Print Recipe

Metric - US Customary

Ingredients

For the dough:

175 ml almond milk or any of your choice
3 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 vanilla pod scraped
300 g all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt

Yeast mixture:

1 teaspoon sugar
4 tablespoon water warm
1 ½ teaspoon dry yeast

For the filling:

300 g walnuts
6 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoon cocoa
125 ml almond milk

For brushing:

1 tablespoon coconut oil melted
2 teaspoon sugar

Instructions

Pour the almond milk, 3 tablespoon sugar, 1 tablespoon coconut oil and the scraped out part of a vanilla pod into a small saucepan. If you want you can put the vanilla pod in there as well for extra flavour. Heat the mixture gently until all is combined evenly, take the vanilla pod out if you added it and let it cool down to room temperature.
To prepare the yeast, add 4 tablespoon of water and 1 teaspoon sugar. Mix well and let it rest until it's slightly foamy - usually around 5 minutes, it should be ready by the time the milk mixture has cooled down.
Pour all dough ingredients in to a mixing bowl and knead well, add just enough extra flour until it stops being sticky. The dough should be really soft and bounce back when lightly poked. Form a ball out of the dough, dust it with some flour and cover it with a cloth. Let it rest for 1.5 hours in a warm place. It should at least double in size.
Place the walnuts, cocoa powder and sugar in, a food processor and pulse for a few seconds until all is evenly combined and resembles fine, dark sand. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the milk. Mix it in by hand. Resist the urge to pout the milk into the food processor you will end up with a large dough like lump that is impossible to spread.
Once the dough has risen make sure you have a large surface to work on. I usually use the dining table for rolling out the dough. Dust the table lightly with flour and place the dough into the center. Gently roll it out into a huge circle with about 1m (40inch) in diameter. It should be as thin as possible. Make sure that it does not stick to the table. Add a little bit of flour if necessary but use it sparingly.
Spread the filling evenly onto the dough and roll it up. Place the dough into a lightly greased baking form and let it rest for another 15 minutes at room temperature. There is no real rule when it comes to placing the dough into a form. You can do that which ever way you like and every time you bake this bread you will, have a different pattern - which can be fun.
Brush the dough with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil and sprinkle 2 teaspoon of sugar over it. Bake the bread in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 180°C (350°F). Lower the temperature to 150°C (300°F) and bake for another 40-45 minutes.

Notes

Traditionally this bread dough is rolled out on a linen cloth with helps a lot since you can easily lift the corners and it sticks less but once you made this a few times, it is not a necessity anymore.

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