Czech cuisine

Trdelník

Name: Trdelník
Prep time: 90 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 110 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Czech cuisine
Ingredients: 500 g Plain flour; 220 ml Warm milk; 7 g Dried yeast; 60 g Sugar for the dough; 80 g Butter; 2 Eggs; 150 g Sugar for coating; 100 g Walnuts; 2 tsp Cinnamon; 1 tsp Salt

A ribbon of yeasted dough wound round a spit, baked and rolled in sugar and nuts.

Prep: 90 min
Cook: 20 min
Total: 110 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Plain flour500 g
Warm milk220 ml
Dried yeast7 g
Sugar for the dough60 g
Butter — softened80 g
Eggs2
Sugar for coating150 g
Walnuts — finely chopped100 g
Cinnamon2 tsp
Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Dissolve the yeast with a spoon of sugar in the warm milk and let it foam for ten minutes.
10 min
2
Knead a dough from the flour, the yeast liquid, eggs, sugar and salt for ten minutes, then work in the soft butter piece by piece. Prove for an hour.
75 min
3
Roll the dough out and cut two-centimetre ribbons. Butter the spits and roll them in sugar.
15 min
4
Wind a ribbon round each spit, overlapping by a third and pulling it slightly taut. Roll it on the table so the layers bond.
10 min
5
Brush with butter, roll in the sugar, nut and cinnamon mixture and bake at 190 °C for eighteen minutes, turning every five.
20 min
6
Let it cool three minutes and twist it off the spit. Hot, it tears; fully cooled, it sticks.
5 min

About the dish

Trdelník is sold in Prague as an ancient Czech tradition, but it came from the Slovak-Hungarian borderland and only appeared in Czech cities en masse in the 2000s. That does not make it worse, but it is more honest to know.

The dough is wound with the strips overlapping by a third of their width. Less and the trdelník falls apart when it comes off; more and the layers do not bake, leaving the middle raw.

Sugar goes onto the spit before the winding, not only on top. It caramelises between the dough and the metal and gives the crisp inner crust home versions usually lack.

Worth knowing

— A spit can be made from foil rolled into a tight tube — it works as well as wood and does not burn.
— The dough has to be rich, with butter and eggs. A lean one gives a dry bread stick with no layers.
— Eat them within the hour. The ice cream filling is a tourist invention with no connection to the tradition, which bothers nobody.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 470 kcal
Protein: 9 g
Fat: 18 g
Carbs: 68 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter