Coca de Sant Joan: the most popular recipe to kick off the beginning of summer

BarcelonaThe first Baluard bread oven, Anna Bellsolà inaugurated it in 2007. She named it Baluard because it is located on this street in the Barceloneta neighborhood, opposite the market. Today there are already twelve bread ovens, distributed throughout the neighborhoods of the Condal City, where the breads and sweets that have made them so popular since the first day come from. Today we explain how to make the San Juan cake that they make every year at home.

Ingredients for a dough of 1,200 grams (one of 750 g and another of 350 g)

To make the bun

• 600 g of medium-strength flour (leaning towards strong)
• 190 g of butter
• 120 g of sugar
• 3 eggs
• 110 g of water
• 40 g of yeast
• 12 ml of anise
• 20 ml of orange flavor
• 12 g salt
• A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

For decoration

• A beaten egg and some milk
• Candied fruit: orange, cherry, melon
• Local pine nuts
• Sugar

Elaboration

To make the bun, take a bowl to knead the ingredients. Start with the liquid ingredients: the egg, the anise, and the orange flavoring.We will leave the water aside to mix the yeast, as the bun contains a large amount of it.With a rubber spatula, we mix the yeast with the water, and incorporate it into the bowl where we have the other ingredients.Next, we add the sugar. Mix well until you check that the sugar has dissolved well in the liquids.Once dissolved, add salt to the flour, and add it to the bowl where we have the integrated liquids. Do it little by little. And mix it well with the help of the kitchen spatula.There are many recipes for bun preparations, some add milk instead of water, but the traditional Baluarte recipe is with water.And now it's time to start working the dough with your hands.Take it out of the bowl, place it on the kitchen counter, and keep folding it over on itself. It's a long process; it takes thirty minutes of work to get an integrated and smooth dough.Let rest for fifteen minutes, covered with the same bowl.After this time, incorporate the butter, which should have been at room temperature. Stretch the dough a little and place the butter over the top layer.To continue, fold the dough, turn it, and work it for another thirty minutes until it has absorbed the butter. so much so that it will be more pleasant to work with.When you check that it no longer sticks to the table and that the dough is elastic, you will have it.A trick to check that the dough is well made is to take a piece and stretch it. If it becomes smooth like a sheet without breaking, the dough will be ready. If it breaks, let it rest for another two minutes.After two minutes, let it rest again in the bowl, with a little extra virgin olive oil, and covered with plastic wrap. You should put it in the refrigerator for eight hours.After eight o'clock, you will notice that the dough has moved, but it is not as swollen; the cold has prevented it.We take it out of the bowl, and now we divide the dough according to the weight we want each cake to have.We suggest you make two: one medium, weighing 750 grams, and a small one, weighing 350 grams. Check their weight with the help of a scale.Shape them into balls and let them rest again because they are cold from the fridge and need to lose their coldness to be stretched.Let rest on a baking tray with parchment paper, where you have put a drizzle of olive oil.After forty minutes, we will now stretch the two doughs. Stretch on the counter with your hands until they start to take an oval shape. Put a little oil on the counter so they don't stick. You can stretch them with the help of a rolling pin. They should be one centimeter thick.Let the cakes rest again for forty minutes. This can be done at room temperature (40 minutes) or in the oven, at a temperature of 25-30 degrees, for twenty minutes. With this fermentation, you should achieve that the dough doubles in volume.After this time, paint the doughs with a mixture of egg and milk with the help of a brush; this step will help us to attach the fruit.Place candied fruit on top, which can be bought well and made: candied orange, melon, cherries, local pine nuts and sugar. finally, the sugar.You can now put the cakes in the oven, previously heated to 170 degrees, for about twenty-five minutes. With a convection oven, you can use the fan option, and top and bottom heat. If you have a steam option, you can also use it for a few seconds to give them a little more shine and volume.After twenty-five minutes, they can be removed from the oven. Let them cool before cutting and tasting them. And that's it.Four tips for a summer night

To follow the ritual of the start of summer, and with permission from the writer William Shakespeare, from whom we have half-taken the title of one of his comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream), we explain how you can best enjoy your Sant Joan cake.

• If the Saint John's cake you make (or buy) has cream, the best advice is to eat it on the same day.
• Otherwise, store it in the refrigerator and consume it within a maximum of eight hours, always ensuring that the cold chain has not been broken.
• If you are one of those who likes candied fruit, you should keep in mind that in bakeries you can get it well prepared to your liking. And the curious thing is that the melon is originally melon, and not pumpkin as has sometimes been said. It is melon, but dyed with dark green edible coloring.
• If the St. John's cake has no cream and there is leftover, it will not be necessary to keep it in the refrigerator. Furthermore, the next day it can be eaten after toasting it a little in the toaster or in the oven.

Enjoy your meal!