Easy Banitsa Recipe ( Bulgarian Filo Pastry Pie)

We will start this week with a Bulgarian pastry cake called banitsa, it’s very simple to prepare and I assure you that you will love it, even more so if you are a cheese lover :-).

The first time I tried this soft fluffy cake, I was just amazed,  it was a full-fledged assault, I think I ate half of it myself…

So I asked my friend, who is a Bulgarian girl how she had made it. So, we met the next day and we made a yummy banitsa together.

While she was doing it like a lasagna, interspersing layers of filo pasta with stuffing, and then when it was baked, she cut it like a chicken pie.

She added a little soda or sugar juice, but since I don’t use it, I’ve omitted it, and it’s great.

It is prepared easily and in just over half an hour, you have a delicious snack. Although I read by the worlds of google that you take it at breakfast with a drizzle of honey on top, so you’ll have to try it too…..

The banitsa ( called tiropita in Greece )goes perfectly with a traditional Bulgarian fermented wheat drink called boza. It’s often consumed together with banitsa or other sweet desserts. Boza, boza beer, or Braga drink is a thick, fermented beverage containing up to 4 percent alcohol mixed sweet and sour taste. Boza can be made of various kinds of flour Barley, Oats, Maize, and Wheat. The best quality boza and taste is made of Millet flour.

Banitsa is also often made with spinach ( in Greece it’s called spanakopita ) and has a sweet banitsa recipe version too, you won’t regret if you make either of these or both :-).

And here is an easy short boza drink recipe you can make at home.

Simple Homemade Boza Recipe

Here are the directions for making Boza at home.

The recipe is for 5 litres of boza.

Clean your equipment well get a brew bucket from your local home brew shop with a bucket with fermantation trap.

BOZA Ingredients

• 5ltr of water
• 2 tea cups of flour
• 2 tea cups of sugar
• 1 tea cup of boza from last times brew or, boza ferment, or also Brewers yeast will do (for Mild Beer type I would suggest again from the home brew shop)

Directions:

Roast the flour in a saucepan while you keep stirring it in the pan constantly to avoid burning it (the flour will become brawn-pink in colour). Take care not to get it burnt, really. If you roast it a little bit more to a darker brown color, your boza will have stronger taste and aroma.

Mix it with a bit of lukewarm water.

Pour the mixture into the pan filled with the rest of the water and put it on the hob or hotplate. Add the sugar and leave the liquid to boil stirring it once in a while. Keep boiling for 5-6 minutes still stirring.

Remove the pot from the oven and let it cool.

Add 1 teacupful of boza (from last times brew) or 1 teacupful of the home-made fermentation (yeast). Leave the mixture in a warm place (or in your cupboard) for 2-3 days to help kickstart the fermentation. When the boza is ready (fermentation will stop or slow dramatically, pour it in bottles (Screw cap – mind how you undo the tops later!)and store in a cool place (refrigerator).

Home-made boza yeast starter

Ingredients

• 1-2 spoonfuls of slightly roasted flour
• 1 teacupful of tepid water
• 1 spoonful of sugar

How to make the boza ferment ( a rustic alternative to brewers yeast):

Mix the slightly roasted (light brown in color) flour (take care to keep it from burning) with the water and stir well.

Add the sugar. Leave the mixture in a warm place for 2-3 days to ferment, stirring it from time to time.

Note: The teacup full of boza or home-made ferment can be replaced by 6-7 moistened and crumbled slices of wholemeal bread /or toast/, or by 6-7 spoonfuls of leaven.

When this method is used Boza has to be filtered before bottling (without pressing the mash otherwise the brew will cloud.)

Another alternative to activate fermentation. Use a mixture of a little bit of yeast, warm water or milk, and a teaspoonful of sugar. Done!

Easy Bulgarian Banitsa Recipe

Ingredients:

Number of portions: 4

• 3 eggs
• 400 gr of feta cheese or if possible the original Bulgarian Sirene cheese.
• 100 gr of striped cheddar cheese
• 100 gr of scratched mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup Greek yogurt or plain yogurt ( it’s best to use the real thing, a Bulgarian natural yogurt, which is one of the healthiest foods you can possibly eat), unsweetened, thick and creamy
• 50 gr of butter

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees for 10 minutes.
2. For the preparation, the first thing we need to do is the filling, for which we will mix: the cheeses with yogurt, butter, and eggs in a grinder or Food Processor, reserving one of the yolks to paint the banitsa before going to the oven.
3. There are many recipes on the internet that use many more eggs but in my opinion, the filling is very liquid with so much, so I have reduced it and it has turned out very well.
4. Once we have the mixture we take care of the dough, for which we will cut large rectangles of the filo dough or puff pastry into rectangles, normally a pack of dough brings 2 portions, each of which we cut as follows, We will maintain the total length of the dough and the width divide it into 3 portions.
5. At this point we have 2 options, one is to make 2 large banitsa and another is to make 6 singles, and I leave it to the taste of the consumer.
6. If we have opted for the big ones, then paste the 3 rectangles of each dough and place the filling in the Center, enough so that it can be then wrapped, rolled, and get a long cylinder, which will roll circularly from a tip that will be in the center outward as if it shingled.
7. In the same way, we proceed with the other portions of dough according to what you have decided to do with them.
8. Then, smear a little butter on the baking sheet and place the panties, paint with beaten egg yolk and bring to the oven for about 15 minutes.
9. Remove from the oven, serve hot or warm and enjoy with your family and friends.

And that’s it. Enjoy!

This Bulgarian banitsa also goes perfectly with the traditional Bulgarian yogurt or kiselo mlyako as it’s called in Bulgaria. Bulgarian yogurt is extremely healthy ( it’s full of lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus gut beneficial bacteria) and delicious with nice sourness to it.

If you dilute it with some water, add a little salt and shake it (or stir) well, you will then have a great refreshing summer drink called Airyan.

If you like traditional pie recipes from the Balkans you can also try my Croatian komiska pogaca recipe.