BANITZA (CHEESE AND EGG PIE)

Ingredients for 1 Recipe

Ingredients for Dough:
1 kg Plain flour
1/2 tbsp Salt
1/2 tbsp Vegetable oil
2 tbsp Vinegar
400 ml Lukewarm water (app)
Ingredients for Filling:
5 pc Eggs
400 grams Feta cheese
300 grams Oil and butter (half each)

Procedure:

1. NOTE: This is quite a complicated recipe, but at the same time it is top of the culinary skills
of the Bulgarian woman. Try it, following my advice and you will see that there isn't slower
and more difficult dish to prepare. And after all that hard work - it is gone in 5 minutes!
2. One of the important things to remember when baking is that the dough likes warm.
So, have the flour at room temperature and sieve it in a deep, wide dish.
Make a well in the middle and put the salt in.
Then add the vegetable oil, vinegar, and water.
Start kneading for about 20 minutes.
The dough should be quite soft and you will know it is ready when it starts making oil bubbles.
Divide it in 7 pieces with the size of a fist each.
Brush generously with oil and leave it to rest for 30 minutes somewhere in a warm place.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: crumble the cheese and mix well with the eggs.
4. Start rolling out the pastry sheets one by one in the following way:
Place a clean, old table cloth on the table. Sprinkle a bit of flour on a wide wooden board
(at least 50x50 cm) and place 1 dough ball. Make a thick pastry with diameter 40 cm.
Replace carefully onto the table cloth and start the pulling the edges away with your fingertips,
aiming at making the pastry as thin as possible.
5. Be careful not to tear it! It is easier if you just lift the dough at one point and start
walking around the table, while pulling the dough away with your fingertips.
The result should be thin, see-thru pastry.
6. When ready, sprinkle the pastry first with oil/butter and then with filling.
Lift one side of the table cloth in a way that the pastry starts rolling until
it becomes a long, thin roll.
7. Have a shallow and wide baking form at hand, buttered and floured.
Place carefully one end of the roll in the middle and arrange it in a spiral.
With the next ready roll, continue the spiral till the form is full.
8. These quantities are enough to make two trays full of banitza.
9. Brush each *banitza* with oil/butter and bake at 180 C in a preheated oven
for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

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