Traditional Serbian bread

          The story about Serbian bread is very old, and it reaches several centuries in the past. We can say that the story about the Serbian bread is old as the Serbian people are. 

Serbian bread has a special taste and special way of preparing and meaning. Depending on the time of year holidays, Serbian bread has a different meaning.

           There are few different kind of bread: bread made for Slava (big Serbian religious holiday - every family has one), bread for Christmas, and every day bread.

Every-day bread doesn’t need to be well decorated, but bread for Slava and Christmas must be little piece of art.

           If you want to visit Serbia or travel to Serbia in time of these special days, it is for sure you will have opportunity to try some of great breads!

Today, we will present one beautiful recipe for traditional Christmas bread.

Ingridents:

• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 50g of yeast
•  Cup of hot water
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 100g of butter
•  100 gr of sesame
• 1 egg white

Preparation:

         Mix hot water with teaspoon of sugar, add yeast and wait for yeast to foam inside. Mix salt and flour and then add water with yeast. Knead until you get homogeneous mass. If you need more water be free to put it. Just be careful, you don’t need too soft dough.

After you are done, leave dough to rest in warm place (about half hour).

When dough gets bigger, make three squares from it, and each square daub with melted butter. After that, roll all together to get a big roll. Use a mold for cake (circle) and fold your roll in round inside. Use a very sharp knife and design on top flowers petals by cutting dough two layers deep ( see picture). Leave your dough again on warm place for about half hour.

Turn on your oven on 180C degrees, and daub just “petals” whit egg white. Use sesame just to put it on petals, and all together put in oven. After put your bread inside the oven, turn it up on 250C degrees, and wait for your bread to have nice golden crust.

When your bread is done, take it out from oven, and take it out from mold as soon as you can.

Now, you have prepared your first Serbian bread for Christmas!

Enjoy!

                                                            *recipe came from our friend Shishka :)*