Friends, did you know that in Bulgarian cuisine there is a recipe for a dish that is suitable for all occasions? That is, it is served for breakfast, as an afternoon snack, as a snack, and as a holiday dish. Wow! This is a housewife's dream! I'll tell you how to cook Banitsa Vita. This is a twisted pie, shaped like a snail shell, made from very thin unleavened dough. This pastry is not only very tasty, but also does not cause heaviness in the stomach, as sometimes happens when you eat rich pies. It's all about the unusual dough and the cooking method itself. Before baking, Banitsa pies are topped with fillings based on fermented milk products or milk.

There are different fillings for banitsa: meat, fruit, nuts, with spinach and sorrel, with pickled cheese, that is, feta cheese (by the way, this is the most common Bulgarian banitsa).

My family loves the sweet version of banitsa with cottage cheese. This is our breakfast, dessert, and treat for guests!

I’ll say right away, if you have skill in preparing dough, or live in a region where you can buy ready-made phyllo dough, then the process will take very little time.

But this homemade dough, prepared with your own hands, will thank you with delicious pastries, and you can safely serve this pie on the holiday table.

So, to prepare one Bulgarian banitsa pie with a diameter of 28 cm we will need:

• Baking dough:

• Wheat flour 500 g
• Warm water 200 ml
• Vegetable oil 5 tbsp. spoons
• Salt 1 teaspoon

Sugar ½ teaspoon

• Filling for banitsa:

• Granular cottage cheese or country cottage cheese (cottage cheese) 5-9% fat content 500 g
• Chicken eggs 4 pcs.
• Sugar 150 g
• Curdled milk or Greek yogurt (4% fat) 200 ml
• Butter 40 g

Baking powder 1 teaspoon

First, let's knead the dough. It is advisable to sift the flour through a sieve twice, add salt, sugar, vegetable oil and gradually pour in warm water (35 degrees), stirring the dough with a wooden spatula. Then, when the mass becomes homogeneous, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand for 1 hour. When the dough has settled, we begin to knead it again. But with my hands. The result should be a soft elastic dough. The most important point is that the dough can no longer be sprinkled with flour and you will need to roll it out on a silicone mat or cover the work surface with parchment paper.

Since we will make rolls with filling from the dough, which we will then roll up and lay out the pie in the shape of a snail, we need to divide it into equal balls, slightly smaller than a tennis ball.

From 500 g of flour you will get 6 balls. They need to be greased with oil using a pastry brush, this will prevent the dough from drying out.

Let's prepare the filling.

Add baking powder to the yogurt or yogurt (I really like how the reaction goes: the yogurt turns into an airy creamy cap and increases in volume). Mix cottage cheese, sugar, foamed yogurt, eggs and melted butter. Now we need to strain the resulting mass through a sieve so that the cottage cheese filling is soaked in the ingredients, but not too liquid, otherwise we won’t be able to roll it up, it will then leak out.

The liquid that drains through the sieve is our future filling for Banitsa.

Roll out the dough ball as thinly as possible, besides, it stretches perfectly with your hands. We remember that this is a special dough, elastic, pliable, with a beautiful buttery surface. Once rolled out, it will leave a greasy residue on the silicone mat or parchment paper.

Place the filling inside the rolled out layer and roll up the roll.

Line a baking pan with parchment paper and grease with vegetable oil. Lay out the rolls in the shape of a snail. You need to start from the middle of the form. We roll the first roll into a rope, and then all the rest in a circle until the form is filled.

Now pour the filling over Banitsa and put it in the oven.

I bake Banitsa in an electric oven in top and bottom heating mode at 180 degrees for 45-50 minutes.

The signal that the pie is ready will be a golden brown crust!

Serve to the table. And if this is a festive New Year's table for guests, surprise them with a surprise, as the Bulgarians traditionally do. Place a coin or a wish inside the raw roll. Then the lucky one will definitely get lucky in a piece of the finished pie!

Banitsa with cheese is the best breakfast pastry we have bought in Bulgaria on holiday for two decades. Combined with natural sour milk, this is an incredibly cool and tasty breakfast that has become a tradition. I often dream about this early morning, a large balcony overlooking the sea, and delicious pastries. Homemade baked goods are very different from store-bought ones, they are similar, but different.

Traditional Bulgarian banitsa with cheese is made from special puff pastry. This dough is made from wheat flour, it contains little fat and sour milk is added to it. After standing, the dough is rolled out very thin - the sheets are almost transparent, and then dried. Now the dough for banitsa is sold frozen - in Bulgaria it is called “tocheni kori”, and you can also buy suitable stretch dough from us - “phyllo”. This dough seems quite bland, unlike the dough for.

There are a very large number of types of banitsa, like, for example. Once I bought a book in Bulgarian, which described the culinary traditions of the Bulgarians. Almost all folk cultural traditions and holiday meals are associated with certain dishes and certain types of baked goods. The banitsa that we are used to is being prepared for the Ivanovden holiday - January 7th. However, it is also prepared on other holidays and on ordinary days.

We almost immediately tried and wrote down how to cook banitsa. At first, there was difficulty with the dough and lack of skills in preparing such baked goods. But, in fact, there is nothing complicated. Phyllo dough is available in most large supermarkets and is good quality and fresh - it makes an excellent banitsa, etc. It is important that the dough is not re-frozen.

Traditional Bulgarian banitsa is made from multi-layered and very thinly rolled dough filled with brine cheese (sirene) with the addition of butter and, often, eggs. More complex types of filling can consist of cottage cheese, meat, vegetables and mushrooms, and various greens.

If you don’t prepare the stretch dough yourself, the banitsa recipe is simple and boils down to distributing the filling and coating the layers, followed by pouring the egg mixture. In Bulgarian bakeries, simple banitsa are rarely prepared with egg filling; they are quite fatty and resemble burek - fried dough, but they are still extremely tasty. For baking you need brine cheese made from natural milk. I like it best when the cheese is made from sheep's milk or a mixture of it with other milk.

Ingredients (6-8 servings)

• Phyllo dough 400 g 1 package
• Fresh brine cheese 250 g
• Sour milk, curdled milk 100 ml
• Eggs 3-4 pcs
• Butter 100 g

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Banitsa, Bulgarian pastry. Recipe

1. So, our banitsa recipe involves using store-bought phyllo dough. It is sold in large supermarkets, where there are refrigerators with frozen vegetables and. We rarely paid attention to any other dough except for layer cake or . You just need to carefully look at the assortment. The packaging contains all the necessary information about defrosting and heat treatment. Don't invent problems, do as written. The stretch-dried dough is easily divided into separate transparent sheets.

   Thin stretched phyllo dough

2. Preparing the filling is extremely simple. Crumble the cheese into a small bowl with your hands or grate it, after removing it from the brine. By the way, you can take more cheese if you want. Add a quarter cup of natural sour milk to the bowl. It is better not to use kefir or other fermented milk products. As a last resort, buy a liter of regular whole milk and let it sour. Stir and knead the filling until smooth. Cheese cheese is salty, so you shouldn’t add salt to the filling.

   Prepare the filling - mix cheese and sour milk

3. Unroll the defrosted phyllo dough, being careful not to damage it. Prepare a ceramic or glass baking dish. As a rule, the size of the unfolded dough does not coincide with the dimensions of the mold, so a multi-layer pack of dough must be “cut” with kitchen scissors. If narrow or shapeless pieces remain, they can be used in the inner layers; this will not make the banitsa any worse. You need to decide how many layers of filling you will get in the baked goods - I ended up with two layers of filling and three layers of dough.

   Place a third of the dough on the bottom of the pan

4. Grease the pan with a small amount of butter and place a third of the dough on the bottom, without greasing the layers. Place half of the prepared cheese and sour milk mixture on the dough. The filling is not liquid, rather it is pasty. Using a spoon or spatula, smooth the filling into a layer of uniform thickness - over the entire area of ​​the dough, from side to side of the pan.

   Spread half of the filling over the dough

5. Place another third of the dough on top of the filling - you can use the dough that consists of scraps and shapeless pieces. By the way, the quality of laying and geometric accuracy of the layers does not matter. The layers of dough may be arranged a little "sloppy". When the baked goods are ready, it will be completely unnoticeable. Place the rest of the filling, smooth it out and cover with all the remaining dough. It is very easy to compact the dough and filling with your palms, leveling the surface.

   Spread all the filling completely and cover with dough.

6. Release the eggs into a bowl or bowl, add all the sour milk that remains - a quarter cup. Beat the mixture with a fork and set aside for now. You can melt the butter in the microwave. This is the preparation of two fills.

   Mix eggs and sour milk

7. Before baking, the banitsa must be cut so that the filling disperses between the layers of dough. To cut the dough you need a small, very sharp knife. Vertically, literally with the very tip of the knife, cut all layers of dough. You will get squares with a side of 4-5 cm. The layers are quite loose, so when cutting you need to hold the dough with your fingers.

   Cut the filled dough into squares

8. Pour melted butter over the cut banitsa. It is important that the entire surface of the dough is covered in a film of butter - otherwise it will dry out and crack during baking, and the melted butter will flow into all the cuts as much as possible. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and place the mold in it.

   Pour melted butter and place in oven

9. After 20-25 minutes, remove the pan from the oven. Pour a quarter glass of water into the eggs mixed with sour milk and shake the mixture. Pour the egg mixture over the banitsa and additionally run a knife along all the cuts and along the side. Place the pan back into the oven.

   

Today's dish of the day is Bulgarian banitsa with cottage cheese (sometimes spelled bannitsa). Because I already have in my arsenal, I can also make cottage cheese muffins quite well, but I wanted something unusual. I dug through a mountain of literature and looked through hundreds of pages of recipes on the Internet and found one very interesting idea for using cottage cheese in this recipe.

What is banitsa

Banitsa! This is what I need - a salty pie, a use for cottage cheese, benefits, and taste! Banitsa with cottage cheese (or “bannitsa”) is a dish of Bulgarian cuisine. It is usually prepared from a special type of dough, the so-called stretch dough, very thin in structure and delicate in taste.

The pie is filled with cheese, but sometimes Bulgarians make “green banitsa” with spinach and herbs or pumpkin (with pumpkin and nuts). Each family has its own recipe for making such baked goods, passed down from generation to generation. But the most basic criteria for a good banitsa are a crispy top of the pie and a very juicy filling.

We, dear readers of the blog “”, will prepare our own special banitsa - with cottage cheese, and our dough will be unleavened, not stretched. Let's try what comes of this.

Recipe for bannitsa with cottage cheese: ingredients

For the test:

• 2 cups sifted wheat flour
• 1 egg
• half a glass of water
• salt to taste

For filling:

• half a kilogram of fat cottage cheese 9%
• 2 eggs
• Salt to taste

For cream:

• 150 grams of sour cream 10%
• 2 eggs

Nutritional value per 100 g:

1. Calories: 193.51
2. Proteins: 11.17
3. Fats 6.63
4. Carbohydrates: 22.09

Bannitsa in Bulgarian: a recipe at home

Step 1. Sift the required amount of flour through a fine sieve directly onto a cutting board on which we will knead the dough. We form a kind of slide from flour.

Step 2. In the middle of the slide we make a funnel into which we will place the following ingredients.

Step 3. Break one egg into the cavity and add a little flour.

Step 4. Add water a little at a time, kneading the dough gently. This must be done in a special way: stir the food in the middle with your fingers, gradually adding flour from the edges. The dough is kneaded in the depression, and not from the entire portion of flour at once.

Step 5. Thus, you should get a fairly tight unleavened dough. Knead it until it stops sticking to your hands. As the rule goes: the dough is ready only when your hands are clean.

Instead of this dough, use ready-made phyllo dough or pita sheets. You will end up with a lazy banitsa.

Step 6. And now a very interesting moment, in my opinion. We will roll out the dough in a non-traditional way: on a towel. Sprinkle a linen towel with sifted flour and place the dough on it. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a layer 1-1.5 cm thick.

Step 7. Melt the butter and use a brush to brush the entire surface of the dough.

As I noted above, Bulgarians make banitsa with salted feta cheese, as well as with spinach, pumpkin, cabbage, meat, etc. Today we are preparing a pie with cottage cheese. For this we need crumbly, fatty cottage cheese (fat content should be at least 9%).

If you decide to make the pie less caloric, you simply risk spoiling it, since it is the fat of the cottage cheese that will give the pie the necessary juiciness and taste. When choosing cottage cheese at the market, try spreading it on a slice of bread: if the cottage cheese falls off the bread, it’s not suitable for us, but if it lies softly, then this is what we need!

Step 8. To prepare the filling for the banitsa, lightly mash the cottage cheese with a fork in a bowl and add one egg. Stir and add salt to taste as you like.

Forming a Bulgarian banitsa: combining dough and filling

Step 9. Using a teaspoon, spread the curd filling over the surface of the dough, without specially distributing it, but simply in heaps.

Step 10. The crucial moment has arrived: using a towel, fold the edge of the dough towards the middle and carefully, carefully roll the dough with the filling into a roll. We roll everything up very tightly and secure the edge. Or make some small rolls of phyllo dough.

Step 11. Now we will roll our roll in the shape of a snail - from edge to end, also very tightly.

Step 12. Lightly grease the glass mold with oil and place our “snail” into it. Next, grease the top of the banitsa with melted butter. Place the pan in the oven, preheated to 220 degrees, for 5-7 minutes to “set” the crust.

Filling for banitsa

To prepare a good cream filling for banitsa, we first need to prepare sour cream. To do this, put the required amount of sour cream on gauze folded in 4 layers and leave to strain overnight. Only in this case will we get sour cream of the required consistency. By the way, this sour cream is also suitable for preparing any other cream - it will come out thick and will not drip.

Step 13. Add eggs to sour cream and bring the mixture to taste: add salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly until a homogeneous cream is obtained. Then fill the hot banitsa with filling, distributing it evenly over the entire surface of the pie.

Step 14. Place the pie in the oven again. He will stay there for another 20 minutes.

Remove the Bulgarian banitsa with cottage cheese from the oven and let it cool slightly. The pie is served warm and with sour milk. Help yourself to this wonderful, healthy, aromatic banitsa! Bon appetit!

Video: how to make lazy banitsa from lavash

Reading time: 10 min

Tamara Polyakova

On my website I introduce my compatriots to all aspects of life in Bulgaria: problems and their solutions, way of life, traditions, sights of the country, prices, tariffs, real estate and much more. Detailed information is in the section.

Bulgarian banitsa can be compared to a layer cake. The history of its origin goes back to the distant past. Since the 11th century, literature has mentioned banitsa or mlin as a delicious Bulgarian invention. In Bulgaria, banitsa is a must-have dish for Christmas. New Year is not complete without it. Bulgarians love to cook banitsa for various holidays and on weekdays. I am Russian, living in Bulgaria for a little less than two years, and having once tried Bulgarian banitsa, I also included it in my favorite dishes.

Banitsa is prepared in different ways. Previously, phyllo puff pastry, which is thinly rolled sheets of unleavened dough, similar to paper sheets, packaged in a roll, was not available for sale.

Therefore, the Bulgarians prepared the dough themselves. The fillings for banitsa were also different: Bulgarian pumpkin with sugar, feta cheese with eggs and sour milk, meat or minced meat with onions and spices, apples with sugar and others. The shapes of the banitsa can also be different: in the form of a large pie on the entire baking sheet, in the form of tube rolls laid on the baking sheet in a circle, with the first roll folded into the middle of the baking sheet and shaped like a snail, the remaining tube rolls are tightly laid in a circle from the first and So up to the edges of the baking sheet, or rolls of tubes are placed on the baking sheet in a straight line close to each other. Typically, Bulgarians use large round baking trays with high sides for banitsa.

Today we will prepare with you a culinary recipe for Bulgarian “classic” banitsa. This means that we use feta cheese, sour milk or Bulgarian yogurt and eggs to fill the banitsa. We use store-bought, packaged phyllo dough. I will also tell you how to replace phyllo dough with another dough.

So to prepare banitsa we need:

One package of filo dough 500 grams,

300 grams of cheese,

50-60 grams of vegetable oil,

50 grams of butter.

200 grams of yogurt (which can be replaced with low-percentage sour cream or sour milk (kefir), which has settled and has sediment from the liquid; the liquid should be carefully drained so that the thick remains remain or strain through a fine sieve, or better yet, through several layers of gauze)

Cooking method:

Filling: Divide the cheese into small pieces and mix thoroughly to obtain an almost homogeneous mass. You can also use cottage cheese instead of feta cheese, slightly salted, but it will no longer be a Bulgarian banitsa, but it will still be very tasty.

Mix yogurt with eggs and vegetable oil (about 20-30 grams), do not add salt, since the cheese is salty and mix well, you can use a mixer.

Sprinkle a baking sheet greased with about 20-30 grams of vegetable oil with a small amount of flour so that the banitsa does not stick and is easily removed from the baking sheet.

Place the first sheet of dough. The oil on the baking sheet will soak the dough a little. We lay the second and third sheets of dough in the form of an accordion, that is, we make folds and wavy gathers from the dough, as shown in the picture.

Then add the cheese filling. The filling should not be laid in a continuous layer, but in small portions, not often, over the entire sheet. Then pour yoghurt with eggs and butter from a spoon - also not in a continuous layer, and also in the same way as the cheese was placed.

After filling, we continue to fold the dough into folds of 2 sheets per layer, again filling with cheese, then yogurt with eggs and butter, and so on, making as many layers as there is enough prepared dough. We do not fold the last two sheets of dough into folds, but tear them into small pieces with our hands, press them down a little, pour generously with the remaining yorurt, eggs and butter, and place butter on top in small pieces on the banitsa in different places.

Bake the banitsa in an oven heated to 180 degrees for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 150-120 degrees and bake for another 20 minutes until a golden crust appears on top. Banitsa is delicious both hot and cold.

Bon appetit!

Preparing dough for banitsa

Now I will share with you a culinary recipe m making your own dough for banitsa.

We have to :

500 grams of flour,

3 tablespoons warm water,

half a glass of kefir or thin, low-percentage sour cream,

half a teaspoon of baking soda,

salt on the tip of a knife,

Cooking method:

Pour the flour into a mound and add the rest of the ingredients into the middle of the mound. Knead the dough, which should not be very stiff, but not liquid, it should be soft. Divide the dough into 8-10 (an even number is required) balls and leave to “mature” for 2-3 hours under a towel. You can speed up the process by placing the balls in the freezer for about half an hour.

Then you should roll out each ball as thinly as possible, do not forget that the finished dough banitsa is made from layers of phyllo dough slightly thicker than a sheet of paper. Look at how thin sheets of dough phyllo is. You should also try to roll out similar sheets.

This is not an easy job, but the desire to prepare a delicious banitsa should help you! The balls are rolled out and only then they begin to form a banitsa on a baking sheet, i.e. the dough sheets dry out a little, which is good. But do not let the dough sheets dry out. The rest of the preparation of banitsa is the same as described with filo dough. However, if you did not get thin sheets of dough, then it is better not to make folds from the dough, lay them straight, and add more filling to each layer.

I can also advise you if you don’t want to bother with preparing the dough yourself. And this is an excellent and quick way to prepare dough for banitsa: buy semi-finished puff pastry in the store, but not yeast dough. Dust the table with flour and carefully roll out the dough into 8-10 thin sheets, you will get good sheets of dough for banitsa.

I wish you diligence in this difficult task and good luck!

Banitsa pie is a classic dish of Bulgarian cuisine with a rich, centuries-old history. Travelers of the 18th century wrote about the amazing taste of this dish, but the first mentions of it date back to the 10th-11th centuries. And to this day, banitsa is one of the most popular and beloved dishes of Bulgarian cuisine, widely known both in Bulgaria and far beyond its borders.

In Bulgaria, banitsa is an indispensable attribute of both festive and everyday menus. The pie is prepared with various fillings depending on the occasion and time of year. The most popular, classic version of banitsa is prepared with a filling of cheese, eggs, sour milk and butter. In spring, fresh herbs are often added to the filling. For the cold season, there are options with sauerkraut, meat, potatoes and pumpkin.

On the daily menu, banitsa is often served for breakfast. During the holidays, a festive version of banitsa is prepared, which is served before or instead of dessert. According to ancient tradition, it is customary to place small objects in the New Year's banitsa, which are a symbol of what awaits a person in the coming year. For example, laurel leaves, coins, twigs and berries, symbolizing love, luck and prosperity, happiness, prosperity.

Nowadays, ready-made stretch dough or phyllo dough is often used to prepare banitsa. But according to ancient customs, every girl should be able to prepare the “correct banitsa” from homemade, thinly rolled stretch dough. Let's try to learn too?!

To prepare Bulgarian banitsa, prepare the ingredients according to the list.

Measure out the required amount of flour and sift thoroughly to make the dough airy and light.

Make a well in the center of the flour and add salt, egg, vegetable oil, water and vinegar. Using vinegar in dough is one of the options for preparing dough for banitsa. It is believed that adding vinegar makes the dough more elastic and allows it to be rolled out more thinly. According to another popular version of the recipe, the dough is prepared without vinegar with identical other ingredients.

Mix the ingredients and knead into a smooth and elastic dough. The dough turns out very flexible and non-sticky, it is easy to roll out on a dry work surface without adding flour or butter.

Divide the dough into an even number of small pieces. Shape each piece into a ball. Brush the surface of the dough balls with vegetable oil. From the specified amount of ingredients I got 24 small balls of dough. From this amount of dough you can prepare 2 banitsa.

Leave half of the dough balls on the board and place the other half on top of them and press with your fingers.

Roll the resulting 12 pieces of dough into balls again. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and refrigerate. We recommend refrigerating the dough overnight before rolling it out, or if you're in a hurry, place it in the freezer for 30-40 minutes. I preferred the first option and, tightly wrapping the board with the dough in cling film, placed it in the refrigerator overnight.

An important point - vinegar was clearly felt in the freshly prepared dough, but after 12 hours in the refrigerator, both the taste and smell of vinegar disappeared, and its presence was not felt in both the dough and the finished pie. If you don’t have time to steep the dough, I think it’s better to reduce the amount of vinegar and use more delicate varieties, for example, wine vinegar.

Prepare the filling for the banitsa. To do this, grate or crumble the cheese.

Dissolve soda in kefir, sour cream or yogurt. In Bulgaria they use sour milk, which can be replaced with another fermented milk product. Soda is added to make the filling airy. Add yogurt, eggs, ground black pepper and salt to taste. Mix everything thoroughly.

Add fresh herbs if desired. Popular options: spinach, beet tops, leeks. I used 0.5 bunch of spinach and 0.5 bunch of sorrel.

Melt the butter.

Grease a baking dish with a small amount of oil and line with baking paper. Grease the paper with a thin layer of melted butter.

Roll out the dough as thin as possible until it becomes almost transparent. To make it more convenient to work with the dough, it is recommended to roll out the dough on polyethylene or oilcloth. To work with such dough, a special very long and thin rolling pin is used, but you can also use a regular rolling pin and pull and stretch the dough with your hands.

Brush the dough sheet with melted butter and spread an even layer of filling.

Roll the dough into a roll. Grease the surface of the roll with butter.

Roll up the roll and place in a baking dish. Grease with a thin layer of butter.

Repeat the procedure with the remaining dough and filling, gradually filling the mold.

Brush the surface of the banitsa with melted butter, and then apply a layer of yogurt or other fermented milk product.

Bake the banitsa in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for 35–40 minutes. I followed the recommendation to bake the banitsa for the first 20 minutes at 200 degrees, then, when the top of the pie is browned, cover with foil and, reducing the temperature to 180 degrees, bake for another 20 minutes. And, if time and patience allow, reduce the temperature to a minimum and simmer the finished banitsa in the oven for another 15–20 minutes.

The Bulgarian banitsa is ready.

The finished pie has a very delicate delicate taste. Freshly baked and still hot, it is incredibly tasty; banitsa does not lose its attractiveness even when chilled.

Reading the recipe, it may seem that a lot of butter is used, but in fact its consumption is small, because the butter is applied in a thin layer. I used about 100-110 grams of homemade butter, the banitsa turned out very juicy, light and tender.