As Good Friday approaches, embrace the spirit of Easter with a delightful twist on the traditional Portuguese sweet bread, known as ‘folar’. This modern take on the Easter staple features a softer, less aromatic dough, even while staying true to the classic Portuguese ingredients. The bread comes in two beautiful shapes: the intricate ‘folar de rosas de gila’ and the simpler, yet equally tempting, ‘folar enrolado de chila’. Both versions share a similar dough base, but the latter boasts thicker layers of the luscious ‘doce de gila’, a type of pumpkin jam.
Making this sweet bread may seem daunting, but it’s mostly a waiting game, allowing the yeast dough to rise to perfection. The result is a stunning folar that’s sweeter than the traditional version, perfect for those with a sweet tooth. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and bake a sweet symbol of Portuguese Easter celebration. Happy Easter Everyone! 🍞✨
Portuguese Easter Rolled Sweet Bread • Folar Enrolado
Celebrate Easter with a modern Portuguese ‘folar’, this is an enriched bread with a sweet pumpkin jam and a softer, sweeter dough. A festive treat that’s a delightful nod to tradition.
Ingredients
- Baker’s Yeast – 1 sachet (7gr)
- Water – 90ml (Warm)
- Flour – 450gr
- Sugar – 80gr
- Butter – 60gr
- Honey – 40gr
- Milk – 50ml
- Eggs – 3L (Room Temperature)
- Gila Jam – 1 bottle (+/- 350ml)
- Cinnamon – A pinch
- Salt – A pinch
Directions
- Start by combining the baker’s yeast with the warm water in a bowl, let it dissolve well and wait a minute just to see if it starts to bubble. If you’re using fresh baker’s yeast or sourdough, adjust the amount to 500 grams of flour; for sachet baker’s yeast, the rule is 1 sachet per 500 grams of flour.
- Lightly heat the butter, honey and milk.
- Add the flour to the baker’s yeast and water mixture, followed by the butter, honey and olive oil mixture, mix and finally add 2 eggs and a pinch of salt.
- Now knead well, until everything is well combined and you can create a ball of dough (if necessary sprinkle with flour to help it form, if it’s too wet), when you have a consistent ball of dough put it in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave it in a warm place or in the sun to rise and double in volume.
- Prepare a baking tray lined with non-stick paper.
- When the dough has doubled in size, roll it out with a rolling pin. You don’t want it to be too thin, you want it to be pretty thick, like 1 finger thick or more, in a slightly flattened trapezoid rectangle shape, like 1 inch high and 2 inches long: D this is a square where one side is just a little bigger than the other, so when you roll it up the center will be a little higher (but it doesn’t make any difference if you make a square or a rectangle).
- Once you’ve made your irregular polygon (who said you can’t learn geometry in the kitchen), spread all the gila jam on top and sprinkle with cinnamon, then roll it up and put it on its side on the tray, so that it stands up
- Cover it with the damp cloth and leave it in a warm place to rise again.
- Once it has risen again, turn the oven on to 180ºC.
- Adjust the dough to make it look nice (in my case, when it was rising, one side fell off, but everything is easy to adjust before it goes into the oven), whisk an egg and brush it generously over the dough and finally put it in the oven to bake for +/- 40 minutes until it’s nice and golden.
- And that’s it, bon appetit and Happy Easter and Happy Good Friday!
Also some recipes change the filling from gila jam to egg jam with almonds or the classic brown sugar with cinnamon (which will caramelize in the oven).
You can also brush the folar with milk or butter if you don’t want to use egg, it just won’t be as golden hehehe.
This recipe for Portuguese Easter Rolled Sweet Bread • Folar Enrolado was originally created on BakeAfter.com. Esta receita de Folar de Gila da Páscoa foi publicada em português no Iguaria.com.
Nutrition
Per Serving: 316 calories; 12 g fat; 38 g carbohydrates; 3 g protein.Did you try this recipe?
Happy Easter! Let me know how it turned out! Leave a comment below ;D
