poppy seed + mixed fruit

i read about the polish poppy seed roll in linda collister's "bread - from ciabatta to rye" and got interested.

the polish version uses some rum (2 tablespoons)
but since i didn't have any at home, i went without it.

i wanted to bake using just plain wheat flour but stupid me ran out of flour so had to sub with wholemeal. thus the heavy loaf.

i used 3 cups of wholemeal + 1 cup of wheat but you could use 4 cups of wheat. no problem there.

as for the fillings, this depends on how much you like. i used slightly more than half cup of mix dried fruit and about a quarter cup of poppy seeds.

the poppy seeds have to be soaked in warm water for a few minutes, then drained out.

as the mixed fruits is already sweetened, i didn't add any sweeter. i added some olive oil though (2 teaspoons).

• 4 cups of wheat flour (i ran out of flour so went 1 cup of wheat + 3 cups of wholemeal)
• 1/2-1 cup of mixed dried fruit
• 1/4-1/2 cup of poppy seeds. soaked in warm water then sieved.
• as again, 1 teaspoon of yeast, 1 teaspoon of honey
• and finally 1 teaspoon of salt

follow the "basic bread recipe", but after the initial rise (~2 hours), take out the dough and stretch/spread out to as big a piece as you could but still maintaining thickness of around 1cm. if spread too thin, it won't be strong enough to hold all the fillings. it'll break when you roll it up. a mess with all the poppy seeds all over the place!

the fillings consist of the poppy seeds, mixed dried fruit and optionally some honey. as my dried fruit mix already has castor sugar, i didn't bother to sweeten it. add some olive oil if you wish. the original polish recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of rum as well.

spread the filling evenly over the spread out dough to almost the edges. then roll up the dough from one side like a swiss roll.

let it sit and rise again for 1-2 hours. bake and enjoy!

PS :  yes, poppy seeds contain trace amount of opiate, from which some quantity is needed to produce drugs like morphine/heroine. however, to have any such "high" effect, you need to consume at least more than 300 grams. the above recipe uses less than 100g in the whole loaf. so you need to bake 3 times as much and consume ALL within a day! i bet you'll be feeling something else rather than a "high"!

poppy seeds are pretty nutritious. described as "a good source of thiamin, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and copper.