Banitza Bulgarian Phyllo Dough With Feta Recipes

FETA CHEESE BUREK (PHYLLO DOUGH)

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease a baking sheet lightly.
• Mix feta cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and eggs together in a bowl. Whisk milk and oil together in a small bowl.
• Brush milk-oil mixture over 3 sheets of phyllo dough and stack together. Place some of the cheese mixture in a straight line on one end of the dough. Roll up tightly to form a spiral shape. Transfer spiral to the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining milk-oil mixture, phyllo dough, and cheese mixture.
• Bake burek in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 40 minutes.

SIMPLE BULGARIAN BANITSA

Steps:

• 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, ( glass pyrex pan works great for this recipe) brush melted butter all over bottom amd sides of baking pan.
• 2. Mix salt, cheese and milk and eggsin a bowl , combine and stir ingredients well.
• 3. Put down 5 sheets of phyllo dough down in buttered pan and brush over with melted butter. You can also put down one sheet at a time and butter seperatelly.
• 4. Pour enough of the mixture to cover phyllo sheets and top with 3 more sheets.
• 5. Continue to repeat the process: put down 3 sheets and make sure to brush them well with butter then layer with mixture until all of the mixture is done, then cover with atleast 2 sheets. I preffer not to butter the top sheets as they tend to get very hard after the banitsa is done baking.
• 6. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden, make sure mixture is cooked in the middle by cutting into banitsa. When the mixture is cooked it will not be runny.
• 7. Once banitsa is done cover it with either a towell or the lid to the pan and let it sit and cool before cutting it or serving. Covering it lets the steam soften the phyllo dough sheets.

BANITZA (BULGARIAN PHYLLO DOUGH WITH FETA)

Steps:

• Whisk eggs and add feta cheese broken in crumbs. Whisk mixture. In a separate cup, mix the yogurt and baking soda and keep mixing until it rises, then add to the eggs/feta mixture. Heat up the butter in a small pan. Filo dough - make sure you're working with the filo dough in room temperature. Once the package is open, you need to work quickly because the sheets dry up really fast. Take each sheet and lay it in a greased pan, pour a little bit of the butter and a little of the yogurt mixture. Then add a second sheet and repeat. Continue doing until all of the egg mixture has been used up. Cover with a final 2 layers of filo and butter. Cut up in pieces and pour in the remaining butter. Bake at 350F for about 25min or until golden.

SPINACH BANITZA

Steps:

• The filo dough takes two hours to thaw, so either plan ahead, and let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight, or be sure to put it out early in the day.
• Put the chopped spinach and finely sliced leek in a frying pan with a very small amount of oil. Sauté just until spinach is wilted, and leeks have become transparent (about 5 minutes).
• Set spinach mixture aside to cool.
• In a large bowl. mix the crumbled cheese, milk and eggs together. Don't over mix - cheese should be lumpy.
• Add well-drained cooked spinach, mix lightly.
• Take a sheet of filo dough, lay it flat, brush it with melted butter, and stack another sheet of dough on top. Butter again, then lay one more sheet on top. Now you have a stack of three layers. With a teaspoon, place a line of filling all along the bottom edge, then, roll it up into a tight roll with the filling on the inside of the roll. The long roll is then taken and rolled up in a circle. This first sheet of dough is then placed in the baking pan. (I used a pizza pan, it worked perfectly) The process is repeated with the remaining sheets of dough and each consecutive roll is placed around the first one in the pan. The resulting shape resembles a spiral. Repeat until all mixture is used. Brush the remaining butter all over the top. Bake about 30 minutes @ 400 F, or until golden.