Extra-Light Baked Flancati for Pust (the rough puff Mardi Gras version!)

Ten years ago, thanks to some Cajun music friends, I made two belated discoveries: Slovenians have a traditional Carnival celebration called Pust. And San Francisco has a small but active Slovenian community, centered on the old Slovenian Hall in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.

I don't know which one was the bigger surprise.

(To learn more about Pust in Slovenia and San Francisco, see Mardi Gras, Slovenian Style: Blood Sausage, Potica, and Polka, my 2012 post about the holiday.)

Traditional Pust dinner with blood sausage, Slovenian Hall, SF

Now, a decade later, I have become a regular at the Slovenian Hall. Especially since I started taking weekly language classes last year.

When Carnival time rolled around last month, I decided to organize an impromptu celebration for our Slovenian class. Traditional foods for Pust include two sweet treats: krofi, or jelly-filled doughnuts; and flancati (sometimes called pohanje), the beignet-like pastry strips my grandma called angel wings. But I wasn't prepared to do any deep fat frying, even in the interest of preserving ethnic food traditions.

Then I thought of the perfect alternative to fried pastries: my baked flancati recipe, adapted from  a Slovenian American cookbook. It had proven to be a dependable stand-in for the fried version I remembered from childhood, with the same fanciful shapes and heavy coating of powdered sugar.

But I had a small problem, this time around. Since this was a last-minute undertaking, I'd had to skip the the usual overnight refrigeration. After just an hour in the fridge, my flancati dough seemed too soft. In trying to correct this, I ended up with a new twist on baked flancati.

Here's what happened: I knew the pastry would become tough if I tried to knead in more floor. So I decided on a more gentle approach. I rolled out the dough on a well-floured board, folded it in half, and re-rolled it. As I worked, I had a hazy recollection of some baking technique I had read about before, but had never actually tried.

Those last-minute flancati turned out just fine. In fact, they were lighter than usual. Still, I wondered how they would be received in my Slovenian class that evening--especially by my teacher and her husband, who had grown up in Slovenia. What would they think of this American shortcut?

My teacher Mia said the flancati made her feel nostalgic. After I confessed that my flancati were baked rather than fried, her husband assured me that he was very familiar with this style of the traditional pastry.

"We call it 'light' flancati," my teacher's husband said. Then he added, "I know how you made it. You had to keep rolling and folding, right?" His eyes twinkled.

How on earth did this distinguished Silicon Valley engineer know about the fine points of pastry making? One thing seemed clear. I had stumbled onto a legitimate Slovenian flancati variation, and not just some American adaptation. In fact, a little research revealed that my "roll and fold" creation was similar to a well-known technique called rough puff (or blitz puff) pastry.

Traditional puff pastry is a laborious process that can take three days. The butter is rolled into a single flat layer and encased in two layers of dough. Multiple rounds of careful rolling, folding, and chilling follow. The end product is a rich dough with anywhere from seventy to seven hundred layers. During baking, steam from the melting butter creates the "puff" that produces those multiple airy layers. 

In the shortcut "rough puff" version, cubes of butter are combined with flour and formed into a rough dough. The butter chunks are flattened during rolling and re-rolling. The result is a rich, flaky pastry with an impressive rise, even if the layers aren't quite as numerous or discrete.

Unlike puff pastry, flancati dough includes eggs and sour cream. But otherwise, I had unwittingly followed the same approach.

Now that I understood what I had been doing, I was eager to make this rough puff version of flancati again.  I had the chance a few weeks later, for another event at the San Francisco's Slovenian Hall.

This time, I made a few changes to maximize the puff. I was careful to leave the butter in visible chunks when I cut it into the flour. I chilled the dough overnight. And I followed a more deliberate folding and rolling technique, described and illustrated below. To bake, I used a slightly higher oven temperature.

The result was the best flancati yet. Even my grandmother would have approved!

Extra-Light Baked Flancati

2 cups flour
1/2 lb butter, unsalted, cut in chunks
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup sour cream
1 T. rum
1 packet vanilla sugar (or 1 t. vanilla extract and 1 t. sugar)
1 t. grated lemon rind or 1/4 t. nutmeg


Place flour in a medium-sized bowl and cut in butter chunks until they are the size of large peas. In a small bowl, mix egg yolks, sour cream, and flavorings of your choice until well blended. Add to the flour-butter mixture. Combine and mix lightly with your hands until a rough dough forms. Bits of butter should still be visible.

Divide dough into four balls. Flatten into thick squares, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to bake, remove one piece of dough at a time from refrigerator.  Let soften until it can be rolled out.

On a floured board, roll out dough into an 8 or 9 inch square--or, if you prefer, a rectangle of similar dimensions.

Fold the dough into overlapping thirds, as though you are folding a letter to place in an envelope.

Flatten slightly with a rolling pin and roll out until you have another rectangle. The pieces of butter will be visible.

Once again, fold into thirds and turn the "letter" a quarter turn to the right.

Roll it out again into a rectangle, fold into thirds, make a quarter turn to the right. For the third and final time, roll out the folded "letter" into a rectangle.

At this point, you will have created twenty-seven layers of dough!

Cut the rectangle into sixteen pieces. Make a slit in the center of each small rectangle. Pull opposite corners part way through the slit. Or pull an entire side through the slit. For more detailed instructions about shaping (with photos), see my original baked flancati post. 

Place flancati on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining three pieces of dough. You will need two baking sheets.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, until medium brown.

Remove to racks and sprinkle with confectioner's sugar while still warm.

Enjoy!

End of Summer Marathon: Two Weeks in my New Old-Fashioned Slovenian-American Kitchen

"Girl in Native Costume, Carniola, Austro-Hungary"

B. Lergetporer, Photographer, 1897; Bled, Slovenia

National Archives, USA

I never planned to spend the last two weeks of summer in an ethnic cooking marathon. But that is exactly what happened.

It began on Tuesday, August 21st.  I had reached Week 32 of my year-long Slovenian cooking journey.  But I was already looking ahead to Friday night, when we would pick up our journalist son at the airport. He had visited his brother in New York and then his grandfather in Florida.  Now he would be spending a week in California with us, before he returned to Kosovo.  I was excited.  My husband and I hadn't seen him since Christmas.

Our cat, inspecting Kosovo 2.0 magazine

For that Week 32 dinner,  I needed to find an entree that would leave us with something to offer our son on Friday, when we would be returning from the airport late at night. Bograč, a variant of goulash,  seemed like the perfect choice: one of those spicy dishes that improves with time and takes kindly to reheating.  Or so I hoped.

Bograč, or Slovenian Goulash Soup

After that Tuesday dinner, I kept cooking.  On Friday, I made a new favorite for the early dinner my husband and I shared: kasha mediterranean, the salad created by a Slovenian-American friend.  Our stock of leftovers was growing.

Kasha Mediterranean

Before we left for the airport, I made up a batch of baked flancati, or angel wings, so I would have something sweet to offer later that night, when we all returned from the airport.

Baked Flancati, or Angel Wings

Our travel-weary son liked the goulash soup, but he couldn't resist a playful dig: "This could be the world's spiciest Slovenian dish."  He finds Slovenian food to be a little mild, compared to the Ottoman-influenced cuisine in his part of the Balkans.

Bograč, or  Slovenian Goulash Soup

The following Tuesday, our son joined us for Slovenian Dinner Week 33.  I made a tarragon-flavored version of  buckwheat struklji, one of the recipes I had included in my Slovenian cooking article for Kosovo 2.0.    To round things out, I added another dish I had just discovered: smoked paprika chicken breasts, this time with rosemary.

Buckwheat Struklji

Smoked Paprika Chicken Breasts

The following night, when our son was off with friends, my husband and I shared an unlikely but traditional dessert combination:  vanilla-ginger ice cream, topped with homemade pumpkin seed syrup and a drizzle of pumpkin seed oil.  It was surprisingly good, even if  I did cook the syrup so long that it turned into nut brittle!

On Saturday, we said good-bye to our son.  I sent him off to Kosovo with homemade chocolate-rosemary biscotti, using a Slovenian-inspired recipe I had concocted. Biscotti always travel well. I hoped our son would, too.  We wouldn't see him again until December.

Chocolate Rosemary Biscotti

The next morning, my husband had to go to work for part of the day, even though it was Sunday. I had a melancholy feeling.  In search of comfort food, I put together a new brunch treat: apple šmoren with brandied cranberries.

Apple Šmoren with Brandied Cranberries

Finally, summer came to an end. It was Monday, September 3. Labor Day. We were hosting the annual neighborhood party.

For the potluck, I made my first-ever Slovenian apple strudel to share with our neighbors. I don't think my mother ever attempted strudel.  But my grandmother made it often. I kept thinking about her, as I walked around my cloth-covered kitchen table, pulling and stretching, until I could almost see through the translucent dough.  She always filled her strudel with apples, so I did the same.  I added just one creative touch: a sprinkle of dried cranberries.  I don't think my grandmother would have objected.

My Slovenian Grandparents, Cleveland, about 1920

The strudel was  a success! 

Now, at summer's end, one thing had become clear: Slovenian cooking was no longer just a once-a-week challenge.  It was more than a quirky writing project.  My ethnic kitchen had been a refuge during a summer filled with too many good-byes, too much sadness and loss.

The food of my immigrant ancestors, almost lost and now found,  had helped to sustain me.  It had become a part of my life.

Note: Most of these recipes have already been posted.  For the rest, read on!

Slovenian Angel Wings: Baked Flancati, A Healthier Update on a Traditional Treat

My grandma used to make us a sweet, beignet-like treat we called by their American name: Angel Wings.  Slovenians call them flancati (flan-tsa-tee) or sometimes pohanje.

She twisted strips of dough into fanciful knots and shapes and plunged them into a simmering pot of oil. (Back then, it might have been Crisco, perish the thought!) They emerged brown and crispy, ready to be mounded on a plate, buried in a snowstorm of powdered sugar, and inhaled by a tribe of hungry grandchildren.

I don't do deep-frying.  So I figured angel wings would remain a distant childhood memory.

Then I spotted a recipe for baked flancati.  I figured it couldn't possibly be legitimate.  But it turns out the recipe came from More Pots and Pans, another cookbook put out by the Slovenian Women's Union of America.  So I figured it was worth a try.

The recipe, I realized, was simply a variant of the rich pastry dough, made with either sour cream or cream cheese, that is used to make those little filled cookies that are beloved by Eastern Europeans.  They are known by various names: Kolachke. Kifles. Rugelach. Everyone has a version.  No, it's not exactly a health food.  But baking rather than  deep frying is still a more health-conscious choice.

I made a few changes in the recipe, drawing on flavor variations I found in some of the traditional fried versions.  Rum instead of vanilla.  A little freshly grated nutmeg.  And I have to confess: I had to use salted butter.  But do try to use unsalted!



2 c. flour
1/2 lb butter, unsalted
2 egg yolks
1/2 c. sour cream
1 t. rum (or vanilla)
freshly grated nutmeg

Cut butter into flour, using knives or (like me) your fingers.  Mix together eggs, sour cream, and rum, and add to the flour-butter mixture.  Mix lightly by hand until dough is firm.   Divide into four portions, wrap well, and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove dough from refrigerater and let warm up at room temperature for about a half hour.  Now, here is where these cookies become angel wings.

Roll each portion out on a floured surface, into an 8 or 9 inch square.  Cut into 16 squares, each about 2 x 2 inches.  Cut a slit in the center. At this point, directions differ. Some recipes suggest you can pull a single corner through the slit.  Others offer more elaborate directions: pull one corner forward, another back.  I finally figured out that the shapes look most like angels if you pull an entire side of the square through the slit.  See the before-and-after photos below:

I decided to turn one batch into the familiar kolachke. I just put a small dollop of good quality apricot jam in the middle of each square and pinched two opposite corners together.

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet, or line with parchment paper, at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, until medium brown.

Here's a step I added:  I turned the angel wings over halfway through the baking time, to make the browning more even and add to the "deep-fried" effect.

Remove to racks and sprinkle with confectioner's sugar.

The verdict:  A sweet and delectable alternative to the deep-fried version.  More like a puff pastry than a doughnut, but with the beautiful shapes and all that sugar on top, who would notice?

Enjoy!  Or, as Slovenians say: Dober Tek!

Update: For the latest twist on baked flancati, see my new"rough puff" version!