Czech Pastries Kolache Recipes

Steps:

• 1. For the dough, begin by combining your yeast, warm milk, sugar and one cup of flour. You want this to rise to double its size, so cover tightly and set aside until it reaches that point.
• 2. Next, beat together your eggs and 1/2 cup of the melted butter. When combined, blend into your risen yeast mixture. Gently stir in two more cups of flour, in 1/2 cup increments. You want your dough to be soft, moist and all the ingredients completely combined.
• 3. Flour your countertop or pastry board and knead the pastry dough for 10 minutes. (It's worth it!) When done, place kneaded dough into a greased bowl, cover and let rise until it's doubled in size (about 1 hour.)
• 4. Once risen, punch it down. Pull of pieces about the size of an egg and roll them in your hands. You want to form a ball, then flatten it to about a 3-in diameter. Do this until you've used all the dough. Brush with remaining butter and place on a greased cookie sheet. Cover and let rise once again..this time for about 1/2 hour.
• 5. After the 1/2 hour has elapsed, make an indent into the center of each kolache with the back of a spoon. Add 1 Tbsp to each indentation and sprinkle with topping. Bake in oven at 350 F until tops begin to brown (about 15-20 mins.) Remove from oven, brush with a bit more melted butter, sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy while still warm.
• 6. FILLING: You can use either canned fruit or make your own filling. If you choose to make your own, try soaking the dried fruit in rum overnight. When ready, cook for 15 mins along with sugar, cinnamon and/or lemon zest (optional). Mash with a potato masher to achieve the desired texture.
• 7. TOPPING: Mix all ingredients until crumbly. Add 1 teaspoon to top off fruit filling.
• 8. Top 10 Secrets of making Kolache 1. A KitchenAid Mixer with a whisk and dough hook attachment. 2. NEVER use water or evaporated milk when making dough. 3. Be patient and allow enough time for the dough to rise for you to work with. Use a high quality flour for dough like Gold Medal Better for Bread flour 4. Use farm fresh chicken eggs if you can get them. The yolks are bigger. Your local agricultural university with a poultry science lab or meat laboratory might sell them to the public. I purchase mine from Auburn University. 5. Measure. Measure. Measure. 6. Rise the dough in a ceramic bowl. Metal bowls do not work as well as ceramic-crock bowls. Warm the bowl prior to adding in the dough and cover with kitchen towel. 7. It does make a difference if your melted butter is hot versus just molten. 8. Use liquor in your fillings. Re-hydrate dried fruit overnight in liquor instead of water. Remember fresh fruit is always better! 9. Use unsalted butter. 10. Spoon the dough out of the bowl and shape into balls and flatten. Don't roll dough out and cut circles out.

Steps:

• 1. Add sugar to water in medium bowl; stir in yeast and set aside to work.
• 2. Heat milk in large bowl in microwave for 5 minutes. Once heated, use a hand mixer and beat in eggs, oil, potato flakes, salt and sugar.
• 3. Put 4 cups of the flour in a large bowl. Add milk/egg mixture and mix well with hand mixer or wooden spoon. Add yeast; mix. Add additional flour, 1 cup at a time (up to 5 cups more) and mix until you can't mix with the mixer or spoon any more. Oil your hands and mix in flour until dough is smooth. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky.
• 4. Oil a large bowl (just smear a little Criso around in bowl) and place dough in bowl - flip dough in bowl to make sure top is also oiled. Put oiled lid on bowl and let raise. What they use is a large Tupperware bowl--either the fix and mix bowl or the large Thats A Bowl. Let dough raise in a warm place until doubled in size.
• 5. Once dough has raised, punch it down and take a medium cookie scoop and make your dough balls. Place some flour in a cookie sheet and portion the balls into the flour.
• 6. Form into balls and place on greased cookie sheets to raise (a dozen to a pan). Let raise about 20 minutes.
• 7. Then take the lid from a can of cooking spray, dip it in flour and make an indentation in each dough ball. Dip the lid in flour before making each indentation so it doesn't stick.
• 8. You want to press firmly so the bottom of the indentation is nearly paper thin. You may need to work the indentation with your fingers a bit.
• 9. Put about a tablespoon or so of filling in each indentation and let raise 15 minutes. It is very important that you let the kolache raise or your kolache will look like Mt. Saint Helens erupting!
• 10. Bake at 425 for 9 minutes. As soon as you remove the pan from the oven, brush the dough part of each kolache with a little oil.
• 11. Remove from pans and let cool on wire racks. Enjoy!
• 12. This batch will make about 8 or 9 dozen kolache. These freeze well in Ziplock bags. For the filling, you can use pie filling. What they use is the long tubes of filling found in the baking section of a grocery store. Popular fillings are peach, apricot, prune and cherry. Poppyseed filling is the most requested. Use the Solo brand filling for that.