Bejgli

Ingredients:

for 2 rolls: Dough:

• 260 g plain flour, sifted
• 78 g butter
• 52 g pork fat
• 26 g icing sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 g fresh yeast
• 26 g egg yolk
• 52 ml milk

Walnut-filling:

• 272 g minced walnut
• 110 g granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla pod scraped
• 40 g acacia honey
• 6 g cinnamon, grounded
• 81 ml milk
• 1 lemon peel, grated
• 1 orange peel, grated
• a pinch nutmeg, grounded
• 30 g candied orange peel
• 30 g raisin

For he top: 1 egg

Bejgli is a traditional Hungarian dessert for Christmas and Easter. Its pronunciation: bejgli. You can fill it with walnut, chestnut, poppyseed, prunes, marzipan, etc. It takes time to prepare it, but the result is well worth the effort!

In one bowl, combine flour, butter, fat, sugar, salt and crumble them together. In the second bowl, mix together milk, yeast and egg. Mix until smooth.

Pour the liquids into the solids, and knead until you get a smooth dough. If the dough feels too wet, add a little more flour; if it's too dry, add milk a tablespoon at a time. The dough should be moist and easy to work with. Do not overknead! Stop as soon as the dough becomes uniform.

Divide it into half, Shape the dough into two balls, cover with cling wrap and let them rest in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Filling:

To make the filling, heat the milk and the sugar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture has a syrupy consistency. Add the walnuts and stir to combine. Remove the saucepan from the heat; stir in the lemon zest, the candied peel, vanilla pod, honey, nutmeg, raisins, and let the filling cool.

Roll one piece of dough out on a lightly floured surface to a 21×28 cm rectangle; keep the remaining dough covered. Spread the half of the walnut filling on the dough, leaving about an inch of dough at each edge. Roll the dough up to form a log, and press to seal.

Place the dough, seam-side down, on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Repeat with the remaining dough and filling. Make holes in the top with a fork to let steam escape. This will help to keep the rolls from splitting along the top. Brush the loaves with eggyolk. Let it dry in a cool place (but not in the fridge) . Then spread egg white on top of the beigli. Let it dry also in a cool place.

Preheat an oven to 200 °C. Bake the loaves for 15 mins, than another 15 mins on 190 degrees °C.