Regular Taste of Memories readers know already, that I am big fan of yeasted doughs. It is like a passion which I try to control, but time to time I must come up with a recipe, moments when I cannot resist and I must bake! Fonott kalács, in English braided sweet bread is ideal for breakfast but you can pair it very well with a liver paté, as I did a year ago, when we invited our families to a series of housewarming parties.
We moved to our house at the first weekend of October, but it was December when we finally packed out all the boxes, arranged furniture, mended heating, replaced the old, broken sink in the kitchen, so all in all we could create a comfortable and liveable home for ourselves. We wanted to celebrate this moment – which sometimes seemed to be hopelessly far away- with our families, but our living room is not big enough to have everybody at the same time at the same spot. So we organised three housewarming parties in a row within a week. The menu was the same, only guests have changed, and they were coming with lovely little presents: with a bottle of wine, a potted flower, family relics that they wanted to give us to preserve…And we were welcoming them with the scent of baking fonott kalács and the warmth of the tile stove. The house was finally filled up with life and not with boxes, and after being so much time away from my family living abroad it felt so good to be surrounded by them. These are the occasions when you feel you need nothing else just be present in the moment. When everybody talks and laughs, slice of fonott kalács are passed to each other, mugs will be filled up with hot tea and mulled wine.
The good things in fonott kalács is, that if you have some left overs- which hardly happens, but better to be prepared just in case- you can use it for many recipes and create wonderful dishes. This gives me a great idea to the next blog post, but I cannot tell you more now. Until then I hope this post will inspire you to knead and braid and bake and fill up your home with the scent of fonott kalács!
Fonott kalács (braided sweet bread)
(2 pieces)
Ingredients:
500 g flour
150 ml lukewarm milk
20 g honey
35 g caster sugar
2+1 eggs (one is for brushing the top)
60 g melted butter
1 level tsp. salt +1 pinch of salt
15 g fresh yeast
Dissolve the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar in half of the milk’s quantity, cover it and let it rest for 5 minutes until rises a bit. Dissolve the rest of the sugar in the rest of the milk. Mix flour, 2 level teaspoon of salt, and honey. Add yeasted milk alongside with the rest of the milk and eggs. Knead it until it forms a soft dough, finally add melted butter, and knead it well until it takes up all the butter and the dough is flexible. Brush a big bowl with some oil, put the dough into it and cover it with a plastic foil. Let it rest for an hour. Put the dough on a wooden board, cut it into 150 g pieces and form small balls. Cover them again with a piece of foil and let them rest for another 20 minutes. Form long sausage-shape of each, then stick three sausages together on one end and braid it starting from the left. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and lay the fonott kalács on it. Beat the egg with a pinch of salt and brush each of the fonott kalács, then cover with plastic foil and let it rest for another hour. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and brush the kalács again with eggs before baking. In case of electric oven, bake it in the bottom part of the oven, in case of gas oven it is the opposite, the upper part. Bake it for appr. 20 minutes until it is golden brown. Let it cool down on a cookie wire.
