If you were lucky enough to visit sunny Bulgaria at least once, you probably tried banitsa there - the famous national dish. How delicious it is! Delicate dough, juicy filling - you can take such a dish to the beach with you, and it will look great on the festive table. That is, hozOboz sees no reason not to cook this amazing Bulgarian dish. We note right away that the cooking process itself takes a lot of time, but do not rush to give in to this recipe - in general, it is not complicated. The main thing is to follow our advice and everything will work out for you!
Banitsa is a traditional Bulgarian puff pastry dish. It is usually prepared with cottage cheese or cheese fillings, but options with vegetables, minced meat, and fruits are acceptable. Banitsa, the recipe of which is on our agenda today, has been an indispensable element of Bulgarian cultural rites and traditions, festive feasts for Easter, Christmas, New Year since ancient times. You can try the Bulgarian banitsa pie in street fast food establishments, which tourists everywhere use and buy banitsa with pleasure on the way to the beach.
The history of this wonderful dish dates back several centuries. Banitsa already in the X-XI centuries was quite a familiar part of the festive feasts. There is written information that banitsa was in the traditional diet of the Bulgarians from Pirin Macedonia. This dish symbolized in the original sense a rural idyll, and was also a structural element of the world order: the sky was symbolized by a baking dish, and the earth was a flat cake like rolled out dough. According to legend, when God planned to cover the Earth with the sky, it turned out that it did not fit under the cover. Then the Creator crushed it, and the Earth (read flat cake) was covered with folds, like a banitsa pie. This is how the ancient Bulgarians imagined the formation of plains and mountains.
For test:
Filling:
Put the flour into the bowl of the food processor.
We send the egg there.
Adding salt.
Pour in the vinegar.
Pour in vegetable oil.
Adding water.
Kneading the dough.
The dough should be plastic and "obedient".
The dough is ready for further manipulations.
Divide the dough into 8 equal parts.
We form balls from the dough and grease with oil.
Put 4 balls on a plate.
We put other balls on the balls and press them with our fingers.
We form larger balls from the dough and send it to the refrigerator, for example, overnight.
Starting to prepare the filling.
Adding eggs.
Salt and pepper the filling.
Add sour cream or yogurt.
The filling is ready.
Preparing the dough for rolling.
Roll out the dough thinly.
Spread the filling on the dough.
Folding the dough.
We form a banitsa from the center.
We twist the banitsa, as shown in the photo.
Lubricate the banitsa with melted butter.
Lubricate the surface of the pie with yogurt or sour cream.
Our banitsa turned out ruddy and appetizing.
Bon appetit!
The benefit of banitsa is that its filling is brynza, cottage cheese or cheese, and these are very healthy products. And the filling can also be improved by adding greens to it - spinach, parsley, basil, dill. In general, you yourself can decide how useful your ban will be. Well, here our Bulgarian banitsa is ready, the recipe of which is not to say that it is very complicated, but not the easiest either. Trust me, this dish is worth the effort! By the way, there is another option - lavash banitsa, this is a simpler recipe, but, of course, it is better to cook a national Bulgarian dish with homemade dough.