Happy Purim! | The Fresh Loaf

Traditional post with homentaschen and other sweet bakes for Purim! This year with fresh yeast and CLAS.

Ilya Flyamer's Blog
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All those goodies look delicious, Ilya! Looks like you're serving a crowd, which is wonderful. Happy Purim!

Thank you Another Girl! I'm bringing a lot of them to work today for my colleagues :)

First time I baked those round things with jam in the center, inspired by colaches, and just tried one - super good! Sour cherry jam, and a dollop of sour cream on top.

Hi,

I was just reading last year's Purim poppy seed post!

These pastries will mean an extra lot more to your guests and recipients with the tasty ground poppy seeds!

I haven't done much with the sweet clas doughs. I read the general instructions in last year's post. So, if I steam the seeds, will they be easier to crush in a mortar and pestle? My poppy seed is 10 years old!

Purim certainly is a day for celebration!!

This is my first post about poppy seed filled baked goods, and has the instructions for the filling, in case you have to start from raw seeds: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66330/grandmas-poppy-seed-roll-sourdough

So I guess steaming them should work, but the method that I know is boiling them before crushing.

I am lucky that I can get hold of steamed and crushed poppy seeds (Dampfmohn, this year got it from Germany), it takes all the pain out of the filling preparation. Otherwise, grinding boiled seeds by hand in a pestle and mortar is rather hard work, but really makes a big difference to the taste and texture. Also my mortar is quite small, so I had to do it in multiple batches. Probably with a bigger one it's easier.

10 year old seeds... I'd get fresh ones! As any seeds or grains, they probably go rancid with time :(

Ah, and sweet CLAS dough is easy - I basically just make a regular yeasted dough, but add some CLAS to it :) This time I didn't have quite enough CLAS, but normally of the flour is from CLAS, like with very white AP flour. Rus Brot has slightly more complicated instructions for very rich dough where he recommends making a small preferment.

Thank you! Poppy seeds are delicious, very popular in central and eastern Europe, but I think not as much elsewhere. Even in Basel in Switzerland with all the German influence, they are difficult to find and very expensive...

This method made really lovely mohn for me this year: https://toriavey.com/hamantaschen-poppy-seed-mohn-filling/

Although probably more dairy than poppy seeds in the end, and you do need to cook it until it thickens.

It also makes a lot, I'd halve the quantity. In fact, I need to do something with the leftovers...

Looks good! Must be very buttery... I've seen a lot of recipe use eggs in the filling, any idea why? I don't have any eggs in it, and it's delicious.

Think the egg is there to thicken, and the milk, butter, sugar, honey gave it a rich sweet taste while hiding some of the bitter taste of poppy seed.

It didn't taste like mohn as I know it!

That all looks delicious Ilya, hope you had a Happy Purim.

Benny

Thank you Benny!

Happy Purim, Ilya. The Jewish holiday when people are supposed to party! I hope your colleagues enjoy the wonderful goodies, but I hope no one gets drug tested 🤣 because all those poppy seeds won't get you high but will sometimes fool the gas spectrometer. A friend of mine once got in big trouble for eating a poppy seed bagel.

Thank you Rob, same to you!

Haha I think they like it, and hopefully no drug test issues, it's not a common thing that happens around here :)

Thought I might have missed Ilya's annual Purim post, but I didn't, what a wonderful feast this year. Looks like some of your hamantaschen have got jam filings this year?

-Jon

I didn't realize someone was waiting for it! Thank you for your patience :)

As usual, I had way too much dough, so for fun I tried making 4 colache-inspired buns, just a round peace of dough with a well in the middle, egg washed, with jam and a little creme fresh. Surprisingly delicious, soft and fluffy edges, slightly tart and sweet jammy center. Very pleased with them.