Cozonac

January 2016

The past few years I have had the joy of celebrating holidays with my friend, Luiza and her family. Luiza is Romanian. She makes this delicious sweet bread at Easter & Christmas each year. I asked her to teach me how to make it!  We planned a day for me to come and make it.  

The baking day began by taking out her handwritten cookbook in Romanian and a large bowl. She explained how to make it to me in between short conversations with her mom in Romanian.  Her mom was visiting for Christmas. I love being in the midst of these two godly women as we go between English and Romanian.  

The dough begins with 2 kilos of flour and live yeast. The eggs, milk and sugar and cooked on the stove and then cooled slightly. Then oil is added to the dough until is smoothy and elastic. I mixed all this by hand while getting instructions along the way on kneading and mixing. Then the dough was covered to rise.  

 The next step was to prepare the fillings for the bread. There are two traditional fillings -ground walnuts and ground poppy seed.