Poppy Seed Roll

I have never eaten/seen/made a poppy seed roll in my life, until yesterday. This was Tim's requested dessert as we were having family over to celebrate his being baptized today. I wanted to make him something special, so I did my best to create this concoction with no prior knowledge of what it should look or taste like. I think it was a success, unless everyone who ate it was lying to me. I thought it tasted pretty darn good, I will do this again for sure.

I started with a sweet bread dough, I used my favorite recipe, you can follow this one, or use your own favorite if you have one.

For the Poppy Seed filling you will need:

1 Can Solo Poppy Seed Filling
Butter for Dotting

Sweet Bread Dough (from the cinnamon bread recipe in Simply In Season):

1/4 C Warm Water
1 T Dry Active Yeast
2 C Whole Wheat Flour
1 C Milk, scalded
3/4 C Orange Juice
1/2 C Sugar
1/4 C Oil or Butter
1 Egg
1 T Orange Zest
1.5 t Salt



4.5-5.5 C Bread Flour

Combine warm water and yeast in a small bowl. Stir to dissolve.

Combine whole wheat flour, scalded milk, orange juice, sugar, oil or butter, egg, orange zest, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix well. When cooled to luke warm, add yeast mixture. (make sure the large mixture is cooled enough because otherwise you will kill the yeast, it is very temperamental!)


































Add enough bread flour (this is the 4.5-5.5 C) to make a soft dough. Knead 8-10 minutes until smooth. Place in a greased bowl, turn to grease both sides (this will prevent a hard layer from forming on the outside of the dough). Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until doubled in size. you will know that it is doubled in size when you lightly press the dough with your finger and the indentation remains in the dough. This will take about an hour and 15 minutes. After the dough has doubled, punch it down and divide it in half. Roll or stretch each half into a rectangle about 15 x 7 inches.

This is where you add your filling. If you are using poppy seeds, grab a can of Solo Poppy Seed Filling,


















use half of the can on one half of the dough, and the other half on the other (duh, right?)


















Dot this with butter,


















and roll it up like a jelly roll (from the short end). Cover the rolls again and let rise until they are doubled, again.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Place the rolls on greased cookie sheets, and make slices in the dough as if you are cutting it into pieces, but do not go all the way to each end. The best way to show this is with the picture below:




























Bake these in preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes and then remove and cool on a wire rack.












































If you want to make this into Cinnamon Bread instead of Poppy Seed, simply use a mixture of 1/3 C Sugar and 1 T Cinnamon for the filling. Eliminate the butter dotting and do not slice the dough once it is rolled up. Allow it to rise the second time as described above, but do the second rise in loaf pans and bake in loaf pans as well. Both are wonderful, and you should try them. They make great gifts, and people are always impressed with home-made bread :-)