Learning how to make Banitsa, from across the country, during a pandemic.
Banitsa is a flaky, Bulgarian pie, with layers of salty feta cheese, bound together by egg. You’ll see many different versions of it, with varying ingredients, doughs, layers, and shapes, depending on whose grandmother is preparing it.
Click here for banitsa recipe
I had never tried any version of it at all. I had a lot to learn when I was introduced, via email, to my Bulgarian-American Banitsa instructor, Petya. She lives across the country from me, we’ve never met in person, but, in a way, we’ve eaten Banitsa together.
I’ve been writing this blog for the past year and a half. Every recipe I’ve recreated has a different story, and a different set of challenges and stipulations. If the descendant I’m interviewing is local to Portland, it’s a bit of a gift. I can ask them if they’re comfortable cooking with me, and then we can figure out the recreation together (or in some cases, the person is a chef and I can just sorta hang back and coast).
Petya and I started emailing about her grandmother’s recipes this past January, back before we knew the world was imploding. I thought our only hurdle would be communicating methods, quantities, baking equipment, and explaining textures with words (that’s a tough one to pull off) via email. I had never made a lick of any Bulgarian food, which made me giddy to try, but also meant I was diving into her grandmother’s recipe blind, entirely dependent on her guidance via technology.
Another curveball: her grandmother never wrote anything down, so she didn’t have a recipe to send me that I could dissect on my own. However, she has cooked her grandmother’s food tons of times, and Bulgarian food is a staple of her family. She was more than equipped to teach me about it – we just had to make it happen.
She sent me the proper ingredients and equipment, including Bulgarian oil, feta cheese, and phyllo dough.
She also sent me a large Banitsa pan, which would probably make enough for 15 people having a Banitsa party . Sadly, this year of social distancing has stopped me from making practical use of the pan yet. But, when this damn plague is over with, then I’m BUSTING OUT THE BANITSA PAN and we’re all getting a slice Bulgarian cheese pie!
For my attempt, I used a 10″ tartpan, and it made enough for 6 people to try some.
After all my Bulgarian equipment and ingredients were in place, Petya also photographed a tutorial of her making the Banitsa using a traditional homemade dough. The dough is slightly reminiscent of a pizza dough, since it gets stretched out pretty thin by hand after resting.
Here are some pictures of what the homemade dough looks like, from Petya’s tutorial:
Banitsa can be made with this dough (a simple dough made with just flour, salt, and water, and kneaded until smooth), OR it can be made using packaged phyllo dough. I chose the easier route and used the phyllo she sent me…’cause HEY, I had to do it the easy way for YOU guys! You have to see it done both ways!!
Since I made my version with phyllo, I added yogurt and the eggs to the feta cheese and used that as my filling between layers. Petya recommends doing it this way, since the phyllo is a drier dough than the traditional homemade dough.
For now I have the phyllo dough recipe written up for you guys, but I hope to fully test the homemade dough and get that recipe up here for you to try when you’re ready to flex your Bulgarian baba muscles.
The finished product was truly delicious, and smelled like heaven while it was baking. The cheese keeps everything tangy, and stops it from feeling heavy. If comparisons feel important, I would say it somewhere between a spinach pie without the spinach, and a crispy quiche with more egg.
This recipe made more than my partner and I could eat. It’s kind of a lonely time for large quantities, so I had to be ready to cope with the leftovers. I always really enjoy having friends over to try out my Grandma Food recreations, but that wasn’t in the cards. So I packaged up what we couldn’t eat, dropped it off at friend’s houses, and asked them to text me what they thought of it, or send me a video of them eating it. It was *almost* like we were eating together.
I’m incredibly grateful to Petya and her family for taking the time to share this recipe and her heritage with me and Canned Peaches. I hope that me taking a thwack at making Banitsa was an enjoyable experience! This has been an exceptionally hard year for, well, everyone, and I can’t be more appreciative of people taking time and resources to continue to share their food with me. It’s truly an honor and a pleasure to be a part of a food’s, and a family’s, continued story.
How recipes are passed along is something I’m *always* studying and learning about with The Canned Peaches Project. Watching recipes change hands is a fascinating way to watch food and culture grow, morph and reflect what’s currently happening around people. I feel like no recipe better captures my time during the COVID-19 pandemic than this one – socially distant, reliant on internet for communication, and delayed for months at a time because so much unprecedented life circumstances happen all at once.
This Banitsa recipes has sort of sat with me the past few months as I’ve gone through lay-offs, closures, deaths, and blissful seconds of joy that I wished lasted longer. It will forever be how I think of Banitsa – and that’s my piece of the story to add to the one Petya graciously shared with me.
And heck, I really feel like, given the circumstances, Petya and I did a pretty good job “cooking together.” It was fun and I’d try it again! Thanks again, Petya. You rock.
Banitsa Recipe
Equipment
- 10" cake or tart pan (9" cake pan will also work fine here)
- Pastry brush
- Linen towel
Ingredients
- 1 – 1 1/2 cups neutral tasting oil, like canola (Bulgarian sunflower oil is the preference, but can be hard to find.)
- 1 lb Bulgarian feta cheese (Beta cheese from Malincho works well)
- 3 eggs, whisked
- 1/4 cup plain, full-fat yogurt
- 1 package store-bought phyllo dough (Bulgarian if possible)
- 1 T sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F degrees.
- Use pastry brush to coat tart or cake pan with layer of oil. Set aside.
- Place entire package of Bulgarian feta in bowl, and use a fork to break apart.
- Make a well in the center of your cheese, and place eggs and yogurt in well. Whisk together, then incorporate into cheese. You should have a goopy mixture that can be ladled.
- Open package of phyllo, and carefully unfold dough, trying to not tear. Lay dough down on clean surface, and cover with towel to avoid drying out while working.
- Working carefully, place a sheet of phyllo into prepared pan. Use pastry brush to coat phyllo dough with oil (be thorough with oil, and not too stingy. Should be thoroughly coated, but not dripping.) Allow edges of phyllo to come up the sides of the pan.
- Repeat exact same process 2 more times, so there is a total of 3 layers of phyllo on the bottom of the pan, with oil in between each.
- Using a ladle or a spoon, lace 1/5 of your feta mixture into tart pan. Spread around fairly evenly, but don't get too obsessive. You don't need completely even coverage. Sprinkle a pinch of the sugar on top of the filling.
- Place a sheet of phyllo on top of the filling, and coat with oil.
- Repeat 4 more times, until you have a total of 5 layers of filling, with a sheet of phyllo between each.
- Top pie with at least 4 more sheets of phyllo & oil. If you have phyllo dangling out the sides of the pan and sticking out, you can trime these off with scissors and either toss them on top of the pie to be extra crispy bits, or discard.
- Coat top with a layer of oil, and a sprinkle of sugar.
- Place in preheated oven, and bake for at least 45 minutes, and up to an hour, until the Banitsa is golden brown, and the eggs are completely set. Check to see if the top is getting to brown at the 30 minute mark. You can either turn down the heat, or cover the top with foil.
- Allow to cool slightly, then cut into wedges and serve warm. Enjoy!