Bobalky

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CarolPa

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Does anyone here make Bobalky? It is a Slovak dish made around Christmas...little baked balls of dough, like bread dough, covered with either honey and poppyseed or saurkraut. I want to make it and I'm told you can use frozen bread dough, but I don't know if I should let the dough rise first and then punch it down, or just make the balls from the defrosted bread dough. There are tons of recipes online for making it from scratch and also some that say to use the bread dough, but none say to rise the dough first like you do for bread.
 
Okay, "mind's tongue" thinks that is so close to the poppy glaze my Grandmother made for a sweet poppy seed loaf she made. The poppy layer in the loaf was a different consistency and the glaze went over the sweet bread. I'm almost afraid to find this favorite dessert from my childhood...it could give me a heart attack.
 
PF, I don't want you to have a heart attack, but your grandmother's recipe was probably very similar. My mother-in-law didn't make the one with the poppy seed, she only made the one with the saurkraut and that's what my husbands family expects to see. I might make some with the poppyseed and honey just to see what they think. I think those are more of a dessert and the ones with the saurkraut are a side dish. My BIL always used to say "Bobalky makes you bulky!"

After thinking about the rising of the dough, I think the frozen bread dough is made to rise just once, so I'm just going to let it defrost in the refrigerator overnight and then make the balls the next day. The people on that website said to "soak" the dried out balls in boiling water, but the way we do it is to put them in a big colander and pour the boiling water over them, so they get wet and a little softened, but you don't want them mushy.

GG I don't know of anyone who made this with old bread. The older generation made the balls from scratch. The younger generation started using frozen bread dough or Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix as a short cut, and the balls can be bought in the local grocery stores in the bakery department. You have to get a bit of a crust on the outside of each ball. Plain bread would soak up too much liquid. I will post a pic of mine when I make it next week.
 
I'll only have a heart attack because I will be shocked I finally found it!:LOL:

My Grandmother was a secretive cooker. But she did share her soap making skills.
 
GG I don't know of anyone who made this with old bread. The older generation made the balls from scratch. The younger generation started using frozen bread dough or Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix as a short cut, and the balls can be bought in the local grocery stores in the bakery department. You have to get a bit of a crust on the outside of each ball. Plain bread would soak up too much liquid. I will post a pic of mine when I make it next week.

I was just guessing based on the comments on that web page. I'd bet this recipe is hundreds of years old; fresh bread wouldn't need boiling or soaking, so it seemed to me that old bread would have been used in the old country.

And of course, people take lots of shortcuts these days. Not many people make their own sauerkraut, for example, even in Germany, my exchange students told me, but canned sauerkraut wasn't available to Central European peasants a hundred or more years ago.
 
I'll only have a heart attack because I will be shocked I finally found it!:LOL:

My Grandmother was a secretive cooker. But she did share her soap making skills.


She wanted all of you to be clean!!

My MIL used to make Caraway Seed Soup, which we called Doughball Soup. I tried it once but couldn't get it right. I asked her to let me know when she was going to make it again so I could come over to help, and learn the technique. She never let me know, but we would go over and there it would be! When I mentioned that she didn't let me know she was making it she just smiled. I think she was afraid that if I learned how to make her recipes we would not come to her house anymore. She should have been happy that her English/German DIL wanted to learn to cook like a Slovak. None of the others showed any interest.
 
Same with my Grandmother...she wouldn't share recipes or stories about her life or culture.
 
My MIL's father hardly spoke any English. He would be at my MIL's on holidays, and none of the kids would talk to him other than to say "Hi Grandpa" because they couldn't understand him. I would sit with him and talk to him, asking him all about the old country and what it was like when he came to America. He loved to tell me the stories. If I didn't understand something he was saying he would call out to my MIL and she would translate for him. I felt bad that his grandchildren ignored him.
 
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