Bohemian Baking

Since I had successfully recreated my family's chicken and dumpling recipe, I decided I would continue on with some family traditions and make kolaches for Jason to take to work for a birthday treat this week. 

Kolaches are another great treat I remember grandma making when I was little, and one that stays true to our Bohemian roots.  I also remember my mom always buying kolaches when she found them at the grocery store to bring up to my grandpa when we would visit.  The flavor of choice for my mom and grandpa is always poppy seed so I picked up some poppy seed filling at the grocery store this week.  After opening the jar and giving it a taste I instantly remember why I always ate the fruit flavored ones when I was a kid, poppy seed filling is gross.  So I decided to change it up a bit and make three different flavors: cherry cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake, and blackberry/raspberry.

1 package dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup warm milk
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup mashed potatoes, without added butter or milk (I cheat here and use the potato buds made with just water)
3 egg yolks
1 tsp salt
4 - 4 1/2 cups flour

In a stand mixer, dissolve the yeast in the water.  Add the milk, butter, sugar, potatoes, egg yolks, and salt and mix until combined.  Add enough flour to make a very soft dough.  Place in a greased bowl and loosely cover and let sit in a warm place until doubled in size, about an hour.

I doubled the recipe so I then split my dough into 4 but for one batch, just split it in half.  Roll each piece of dough into a log shape and cut into about 1" rounds.

Flatten out each piece into about a 3" circle that is higher around the edges than in the middle.

Place these rounds onto greased baking sheets and allow to rise again for about 40 minutes.  It would help to cover the baking sheets with parchment paper but I was out so I didn't.  This will help if the filling runs out of the dough so the bottoms of the kolaches don't get burned by all the sugars.

While the dough was rising again, I got to work on my fillings.  The beauty of kolaches is that once you have the dough made you can fill them with anything you like.  I had some home made cherry pie filling in the freezer so I brought that out and heated it up.

Then I chopped up some strawberries and cooked them up with some sugar and gelatin to thicken it up a bit.

Last but not least I mixed up some blackberry pie filling with some raspberries to create my third filling.

Once the dough had risen, I filled each round with a heaping spoonful of filling and popped them into a 375 oven for about 15 minutes, just until they are a light golden brown.  Remove and place on wire racks to cool.

Once they had cooled completely I decided to top the strawberry and cheery ones with some of the leftover cheesecake filling I had in the fridge.  Here's the finished product.

cherry cheesecake

strawberry cheesecake

and blackberry/raspberry

They taste just like the ones that grandma used to make!

Grandma would be so proud

Some of my fondest childhood memories come from my time in the kitchen with my Grandma Hoffman and my mom.  I love watching grandma bake, it seemed like there was nothing she couldn't do.  She learned traditional Bohemian recipes from her mother-in-law and loved to create those dishes for her family.  My mother learned that love of the kitchen from grandma and for as long as I can remember my absolute favorite dish mom makes is chicken and dumplings. 

When you hear chicken and dumplings, most people think of a brothy soup filled with little dense dumplings.  I know I am a bit biased, but our family's is so much better than that.  Our chicken and dumplings is more like a stew.  Big pieces of shredded chicken, pieces of carrots and celery and light fluffy dumplings as big as your fist. 

When I moved in with Jason about 4 years ago, I asked my mom how she made some of my favorite dishes so I would be able to recreate them in our new home.  There was only one problem, there was no recipe for chicken and dumplings!  She told me the basics and wrote down the recipe to grandma's 13 minute dumplings and I was left to figure it out on my own.

When I started the carb unit in school a few weeks ago and saw that we had an at home assignment to make a dish with a carb as the main component, I knew I had to attempt to duplicate this delicious dish.

Hoffman Family Chicken and Dumplings

8 cups chicken stock
1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces or 4 bone in skin on chicken breasts
1 tsp poultry seasoning
5 carrots, peeled and cut into about 1/4"x2" pieces
2 stalks celery, cut into about 1/4"x2" pieces
1 small onion, large diced ( I don't remember onions in the original but I like the flavor they add)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 Tbs cornstarch
4 Tbs water

2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
milk

Add the chicken stock, chicken pieces and poultry seasoning to a roaster and cook at 250 for about 1 1/2 hours, just until it reaches 165 internal temperature.  You don't want to overcook the chicken because it will continue to simmer for hours later.

Remove the cook chicken from the roaster and set aside to cool a bit.  Strain the broth to remove any of the fat or skin from cooking the chicken and return the clean broth to the roaster.  Shred the cooked chicken into large pieces and return to the roaster.  Chop all the vegetables and add to the roaster along with the seasonings.  Simmer this mixture at 200 for at least 2 hours.

When the vegetable are cooked through, it's time to start the dumplings.  Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  In a liquid measuring cup, crack one egg.  Fill the measuring cup with milk to the one cup line.  Whisk up the wet ingredients and add it to the dry.  Mix until well combined.  Turn up the heat on the roaster to 325 and once it's boiling, drop the dumplings on top of the liquid.

 For this recipe the dumplings should be quite large but you can make them smaller if you want to for other dishes.  After all the dumplings are in the roaster, cover and set a timer for 13 minutes.  This is crucial: No Peeking, No Lifting the Cover at All!  You must let the dumplings cook, covered for 13 minutes.  I don't know what would happen if you don't follow that step but according to the way my mom would yell at us not to lift the lid when we were kids, I think the world may end.  So don't mess with them until your timer goes off.  You wouldn't want to be the one responsible for the world ending would you?

Once the 13 minutes are up, you can remove the cover and the dumplings from the roaster.  They will be perfectly cooked through and light and fluffy, I promise.  Because these dumplings are so large they need to be cut in half.  Pay attention, I'm going to teach you an amazing trick.  No knives are needed, these dumplings get cut with a piece of thread. 

I remove them two at a time and wrap a long piece of thread around them, cross it in the front and pull the ends to cut through each dumpling.  Keep cutting until they are all split in two.

See how light and fluffy they are?  And because they cook in the broth, they don't need any seasoning.  Once the dumplings are done, use the roaster cover to keep them warm while you thicken the sauce.  In a small bowl, mix together the cornstarch and water.  Add this mixture to the chicken mixture and allow to cook a few more minutes until the sauce thickens up.  Serve the the dumplings in the bottom of a bowl and top with a generous amount of the chicken mixture.

I think I cam pretty darn close to duplicating the family recipe and I promise you this is the much better than any other chicken and dumpling soup you will ever have!