Gormandize: Yumuşacık Poğaça (Croatian fluffy savoury buns)

A-dizzle and I recently had a whole group of people over to help us eat all our Croatian food. Not only was this a particularly fun one to make with helpers but it was also by far the most popular savoury dish we served. There is something so fun about inviting people over and then getting them to help you with the food and we had a great time rolling these out, check it:

Poğaça is a savoury bread/pastry eaten in Croatia, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, FYR Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Hungary, Greece (where its called bougatsa Μπουγάτσα) and Turkey with variations.Typically it is filled with feta cheese, however, this isn't a very vegan option so these ones have a vegan filling of my own devising, comprising of creamy potatoes, grated pickles and chopped parsley - it was such a hit that my guests were eating the leftover filling straight out of the saucepan.

I have to give a big thank you to the fantastic @rhelune for sending me the idea for these, and also for all the other awesome advice and recipes sent to me via twitter.

Poğaça with Potato and Pickles

Ingredients

Dough

4 cups flour

¼ cup warm soy milk
1x 7g sachet dry instant yeast
½ cup canola oil
1 tbsp sugar
¾ cup mineral water

Filling

2 potatoes, peeled and washed

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp nuttelex

2 pickled cucumbers

1 bunch continental parsley

Sea salt, to taste

Plus

Soy milk, to brush on top

Poppy seeds

To Make

Dough

1. Mix sugar and yeast with warm milk. Combine all the dough ingredients including this milk mixture and mix them well. You can add a little more flour or mineral water if either of them is not enough. You should have a pliable and nonsticky dough.

2. Cover it with a moist cloth and let it rest in a warm spot for 45 min.

Filling

1. Chop the potatoes and boil them in plenty of water until completely cooked.

2. Melt nuttelex in a saucepan and sauté the onions until translucent and soft.

3. Coarsely grate the pickled cucmubers and add to the onions. Sauté until the onions are completely cooked. Remove from the heat. Add the potatoes and mash with a potato masher (doesn’t have to be smooth, leave it chunky).

4. Finely chop the parsley and stir through the filling with the sea salt.

Assembly

1. Preheat the oven to 180 Degrees

2. Take a small piece from the dough and flatten it with your hands. You can do this on the counter. Put a tsp of potato mixture on it and close it up folding the edges upwards like a bundle. Do the same for the rest of the dough.

3. Place a parchment paper in a baking tray and place the poğaça on it. The folded side of poğaça should be at the bottom to have a ball shape. This is best done with help :) Try to make them all the same size, however, as you can see below, we didn't really succeed due to multiple rollers, but it didn't affect their cooking.

4. Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with poppy seeds.

5. Bake for 20-25 mins or until they are nice and golden on top. Serve straight out of the oven or allow to cool to room temperature (both delicious).

Makes 12.