Nokul

A yeast dough rather than pastry sheets, cut into portions before it is baked rather than after.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

the dough

• 600 g plain flour
• 250 ml warm milk
• 7 g fast-action dried yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 10 g salt
• 80 g butter, melted
• 1 egg

the filling

• 80 g soft butter
• 200 g white cheese, crumbled
• 100 g walnuts, chopped
• 60 g poppy seeds

to finish

• 1 egg yolk, for glazing
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds

Method

1. IT IS A YEAST DOUGH RATHER THAN PASTRY SHEETS, which puts it outside the börek family it is usually shelved with. Flour, milk, yeast, butter and egg, kneaded, risen and rolled out as one sheet -- not yufka, not a laminated stack. What comes out is a soft bready roll with a spiral of filling through it, closer to a bun than to anything flaky, and it is often put on the table instead of bread for exactly that reason.
2. IT IS CUT INTO PORTIONS BEFORE IT IS BAKED, NOT AFTER. The filled sheet is rolled into a long rope and then cut across into individual pieces, and those pieces are proved and baked as separate rolls. This is the opposite of the börek pages here, which bake whole and are cut at the end, and it is why each nokul has two exposed spiral faces that brown and go slightly crisp while the body stays soft.
3. THE BUTTER GOES ON FIRST AS A THIN COAT, THEN THE DRY FILLING OVER IT. Soft butter spread over the rolled sheet, then the cheese, walnut or poppy seed scattered on. The butter is what the filling sticks to and what keeps the spiral from welding shut; scattered onto bare dough, the filling falls out as the rope is cut.
4. THE THREE FILLINGS ARE NOT MIXED TOGETHER. Cheese, walnut and poppy seed each go in their own rolls -- the dough is divided in three and each third filled separately. All three at once gives a muddle in which the poppy seed wins; separately, one batch of dough gives three distinct things, which is how it is actually sold.
5. THE CUT PIECES ARE PROVED AGAIN BEFORE BAKING. Thirty minutes on the tray after cutting. Baked straight from the knife they are dense and the spiral is tight; proved, they open out and the layers separate.
6. The flour, yeast, sugar and salt stirred together, then the warm milk, melted butter and egg added.
7. Kneaded 12 MINUTES to a soft dough and risen 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES.
8. The dough divided into THREE and each third rolled out to a rectangle about 30 cm by 20 cm.
9. Each rectangle spread with a THIN coat of soft butter.
10. The first scattered with the cheese, the second with the walnuts, the third with the poppy seeds. Kept SEPARATE.
11. Each rolled up from the long side into a rope.
12. Each rope CUT ACROSS into 4 pieces, so twelve in all.
13. Set cut-face up on lined trays and PROVED 30 MINUTES.
14. Brushed with egg yolk and scattered with sesame.
15. Baked at 180°C for 22 to 25 MINUTES, until golden.
16. TESTED: the spiral should be visibly open on the cut faces. A tight dense spiral means the second prove was skipped.
17. Served warm. Soft for 2 days.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes