Kifli - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kifli (ˈkifli) is a traditional Hungarian, Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

(кифла/kifla), Bulgarian

Bulgarians

The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

(кифла) Czech (rohlík), Slovak

Slovaks

The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...

(rožok) and Polish

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

(rogal) yeast roll made into a crescent shape.

Method

A "kifli" is made by cutting sheets of soft yeast dough into triangular wedges, and rolling up those wedges to form a crescent shape which is then baked. "Kifli" differs from the French "croissant" (the word means "kifli") in that it is made from a plain, bread-like dough (thus being more akin to a roll than to pastry) and being both thinner and longer. They may also come in different sizes, some of them equalling in weight a small bread loaf.

Regular

The rolls of dough can be left plain or given a water brushing as they come out of the oven to make them shiny, or given an egg wash and sprinkled with either poppy seeds

Poppy Seeds

Poppy Seeds, released in 1971, was the second and final studio album from Vancouver, British Columbia band The Poppy Family. The album has yet to be released on modern formats and remains a rare vinyl....

or caraway seeds mixed with coarse salt. The latter variety is often made into a straight shape, instead of curved like a crescent. "Kifli" is eaten like bread or rolls, usually made into a sandwich, sometimes plain or with butter like fresh baguette. Often, especially for breakfast, the topping is jam or honey, or used for dunking.

Fine

Same as regular but the dough may contain butter or other shortening and/or milk. It has a sweeter flavor than the regular variety and is therefore especially well suited to be eaten with jam or honey

Honey

Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...

, as is often done for breakfast with coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

, hot chocolate

Hot chocolate

Hot chocolate is a heated beverage typically consisting of shaved chocolate, melted chocolate or cocoa powder, heated milk or water, and sugar...

or milk

Milk

Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...

Sweets

There are a couple of sweets that carry the name "kifli" to describe their shape but they are eaten at the end of a meal or with an afternoon tea

Tea

Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

or coffee

Coffee

and have nothing to do with "kifli" which, if the word is used on its own, always means the regular or fine varieties described above.

vaníliás kifli is a small soft cookie
Cookie
In the United States and Canada, a cookie is a small, flat, baked treat, usually containing fat, flour, eggs and sugar. In most English-speaking countries outside North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have...

made from a dough of ground nuts
Nut (fruit)
A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

, instead of flour. It is usually made with walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

s but almond
Almond
The almond , is a species of tree native to the Middle East and South Asia. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree...

s are more often used outside of Hungary. Once baked they are rolled in vanilla
Vanilla
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...

flavored confectioners' sugar before allowed to cool.
diós kifli, mákos kifli, also known as Pozsonyi kifli (Pozsony is the Hungarian name of Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

, capital city of the Slovak Republic) are crescent shaped sweet levened pastries filled with a sweet walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

or poppy
Poppy
A poppy is one of a group of a flowering plants in the poppy family, many of which are grown in gardens for their colorful flowers. Poppies are sometimes used for symbolic reasons, such as in remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime....

paste. They are a variety of beigli, very similar in flavor but different in shape and size.

Origin

A common culinary myth claims that when Christian forces freed Buda

Buda

For detailed information see: History of Buda CastleBuda is the western part of the Hungarian capital Budapest on the west bank of the Danube. The name Buda takes its name from the name of Bleda the Hun ruler, whose name is also Buda in Hungarian.Buda comprises about one-third of Budapest's...

from Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

occupation in 1686 the bakers of the town celebrated the victory the next day by selling freshly baked bread rolls made into a crescent shape. The fashion caught on, the "kifli" was born. This however has been refuted by historian Karl Teply in 1985.

Trivia