Portuguese Easter Meat Bread • Folar de Carnes Valpaços

Remember when I said a long time ago (yesterday), that I would think about sharing an awesome savory Easter bread… well that day… apparently is today! Heheheh right on time for Easter Sunday!

These kinds of savory meat breads are very common in Portugal, especially at Easter and especially in the north of the country, there are a lot of recipes, some are more heavy meat based, some are more light with just a bit of meat to flavor the bread, some are very rich in smoked sausages, these can range from regional recipes to family ones, but for today I’m sharing one from the Valpaços region of Portugal.

This version is kinda the super rich version, it has very different smoked sausages as well as chicken, it’s one of my favorite, mostly because I think the chicken helps make it richer but also cut all the salt and richness from the smoked sausages, it’s a fantastic recipe, so let’s check it out!

Portuguese Easter Meat Bread • Folar de Carnes Valpaços

Servings: 20
Time: 1hr 30mins
Difficulty: Hard
Rating: ★★★★★
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Fantastic recipe of savory Easter Bread from the north of Portugal, perfect for a meal, parties or picnics.

Ingredients

Flour – 500gr (T65)
Eggs – 6
Egg Yolk – 1 (To brush)
Butter – 75gr
Lard – 50gr
Olive Oil – 50ml
Water – 50ml (Warm)
Baker’s Yeast – 1 Sachet (10gr)
Large Peperoni – 100gr (Also Known as Salpicão)
Seia Smoked Sausage – 80gr
Lamego Smoked Sausage – 80gr
Smoked ham – 100gr
Chicken – 150gr (already cooked and shredded)
Parsley – 1 Pinch
Salt – 1 teaspoon

Directions

Start by heating the eggs in their shells a little, add them to a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes (not to cook the eggs, just to warm them up).

Heat the butter, olive oil, and lard – you don’t have to dissolve them, just make sure they are warm and pliable.
In a small bowl add the yeast to the warm water and a little flour, mix.
Sift the flour into a large bowl, mix it with the salt and make a hole in the center.
Pour in the yeast mixture and mix everything together.

Then add the eggs, one by one, mix and work the dough, then add another egg, repeat until you have no more eggs.
Then add the fat, knead it all again until the dough absorbs everything, the result should be a consistent but fatty dough.

Pour the dough into a bowl, cover, and let it rise for at least 2 hours in a warm place to at least double in size.

When it’s ready, dust a counter with flour and separate the dough into 4 dough balls.
In a round clay baking pan or cake pan, grease it well with olive oil and arrange one of the dough balls, stretch it until it lines the bottom.

Now arrange 1/3 of the filling on top of the stretched dough, roughly cut the sausages (especially the ham), cover with a pinch of chopped parsley.
Pour in another ball of dough and stretch it until it covers the filling.
Then fill it with the remaining sausages and chicken with a pinch of parsley and cover it with dough again.

Place the rest of the filling and cover, brush the top with a whisked egg yolk.
Finally, cover with a cloth and let it rise one last time for about 1 hour in a warm place.

Preheat the oven to 200 °C and bake for about 40 minutes until well baked, bon appétit and Happy Easter!

Notes: If you don’t have a warm place to leave the dough, or it’s Winter, you can always heat the oven to about 50ºC, turn off the oven and put the dough in the middle of the oven, so it has a warm place to rise.

When stuffing, cut the ham or any of the smoked meats into pieces, because if you leave whole pieces it might be harder to cut slices, as an example, I forgot to cut the smoked ham to small enough pieces and when I went to cut perfect slices the ham kept sliding off the bread, also try and leave some spaces when you put the filling both on the edges and on the inside while layering, so the dough can connect between the layers, and you will have a more stable bread.

Even though I used specific chorizos from Portugal, as it is the tradition with these types of savory meat breads, you can and should use whatever meats you prefer or have at hand, in Valpaços people use homemade chorizo or sausages they prefer, the recipe is just the basis for what is expected, but you can diverge a little, just try and keep the same quantities and try and mix, if you take chicken out or just use ham, it won’t be any good, you need variety, it just doesn’t need to be exactly those specific sausages.

You can check if the “folar” is well baked by sticking a knife into the middle of it, if it comes out dry, it’s good, if it comes out doughy or wet then it needs to bake a little longer.

This recipe for Portuguese Easter Meat Bread • Folar de Carnes Valpaços was originally created on BakeAfter.com. Esta receita de Folar de Valpaços foi publicada em português no Iguaria.com.