Coca de Sant Joan, how to prepare the best one? Recipe from the pastry chef Èric Ortuño, of L' Atelier

The pastry chef Èric Ortuño, from L' Atelier de Barcelona, explains how to prepare at home the classic coca de San Juan, with custard and with cherries. Ortuño follows a family recipe, from his children's grandmother, and makes it with sourdough.

Coca de San Juan (with cream and cherries from Miravet)

Ingredients for 2 cakes of 800 grams each

To prepare the sourdough

• 125 g flour
• 80 ml of water
• 25 g of yeast

For the coca batter

• 375 g flour
• 110 g milk
• 85 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 g salt
• 75 g butter
• 75 g Miravet cherries

For the cream

• 1/2 litre of milk
• 40 g starch
• 100 g sugar
• 1 cinnamon pod
• 1 lemon peel
• 4 egg yolks

Preparation

1. Prepare the dough by mixing the flour, the yeast and the water. Knead it for five minutes until it is well kneaded, like a ball. Let it ferment, cover, for one hour, until it doubles in volume.
2. After one hour, add the flour, the salt, the sugar, the two eggs and, little by little, the milk. Knead it. When it is very kneaded, add the butter, and knead it again.
3. Once the dough is very well kneaded and elastic, let it rest for fifteen minutes. Cover it to let it rest.
4. To prepare the pastry, mix the sugar with the yolk in a bowl. Mix the mixture vigorously. Then add the starch and stir again.
5. In the meantime, heat in a saucepan the milk with the lemon peel and a cinnamon pod. Once it is very hot, add the sugar and the eggs. Strain it, and let the cream cool on a tray.
6. Come back to the dough. From the ball you have to make two cocas. Pour olive oil on top and underneath, and stretch them with your hand. Put baking paper on a tray and on top, put the cocas. Let them ferment in the oven off for thirty minutes or forty-five minutes, which is the time necessary for them to double in volume.
7. Once the pastry has risen again, brush it with beaten egg, and put the cherries, halved and pitted, in one of them, and in the other one, put the cream, which you have previously put in a pastry hose. Sprinkle a bit of perlat sugar on top of the two cakes.
8. Bake them in the oven for twenty minutes at 200º.

Bon appetit!