Banitsa

Bulgaria's coiled filo pie of sirene cheese and egg, and on New Year's Eve the one with fortunes baked inside it

Origin: Sofia & Bulgaria

From the journey of Wheat.

Banitsa is filo, cheese, and egg, and the argument in Bulgaria is entirely about shape. The sheets are brushed with butter or oil, spread with a mixture of crumbled sirene, beaten egg, and yoghurt, then either rolled into long ropes and coiled into a spiral in a round tin, or layered flat and cut into squares. The coiled version is the older and the more usual, and it bakes with a crisp shell and a soft interior where the filling has steamed between the layers. The cheese is not interchangeable. Sirene is a brined white cheese, crumbly, salty, and slightly sour, made across Bulgaria from cow's, sheep's, or a mixture of milks; it is close to a Greek feta and Bulgarians will tell you at length that it is not the same thing. What matters at the stove is that it is salty and dry enough to season the whole pie without any additional salt and firm enough not to weep. The New Year's Eve version is the reason most outsiders have heard of it. Small paper fortunes, kysmeti, are wrapped in foil and buried in the filling before baking, one for each person at the table, and each fortune names something for the coming year: health, love, money, travel, happiness. Some households substitute or add a coin, and finding it is the good one. In older practice cornel-cherry twigs with buds counted were used instead of paper, and the custom is genuinely old even if the printed fortunes are not. It is eaten at breakfast with ayran or boza, at any hour from a bakery counter, and warm rather than hot. Bulgarians reheat it readily and regard a day-old banitsa as perfectly good.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 500 g filo pastry, about 12 large sheets

Filling

  • 400 g sirene or Bulgarian white brined cheese, crumbled
  • 5 eggs
  • 250 g full-fat natural yoghurt
  • 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

To assemble

  • 150 g butter, melted, or 150ml sunflower oil

To finish

  • 2 tbsp yoghurt thinned with 2 tbsp water, for the top
  • 1 tbsp sesame or nigella seeds

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 190°C and butter a round tin about 28cm across.
  2. Beat four of the eggs with the yoghurt and the bicarbonate. The bicarbonate reacts with the yoghurt's acid and lightens the filling, which is standard Bulgarian practice.
  3. Fold in the crumbled cheese and the pepper. Add no salt: sirene carries enough for the whole pie.
  4. Keep the filo covered with a damp cloth as you work, uncovering one sheet at a time. Filo dries to brittleness within a couple of minutes in a warm kitchen.
  5. Lay a sheet flat, brush it generously with melted butter, and spoon a line of filling along one long edge.
  6. Roll it loosely into a long rope. Loosely is deliberate: a tightly rolled banitsa steams into a solid mass rather than staying layered.
  7. Coil the first rope into the centre of the tin, then continue with the remaining sheets, laying each new rope around the last to build a spiral out to the edge.
  8. If you are making the New Year version, tuck the foil-wrapped fortunes into the coils as you go, spacing them so everyone gets one.
  9. Brush the top generously with the remaining butter.
  10. Beat the last egg with the thinned yoghurt and pour it over the surface, letting it run into the gaps between the coils. This is what gives the finished top its glaze and its softness.
  11. Scatter the seeds over and bake for forty to forty-five minutes, until deep golden and firm in the middle.
  12. Rest for fifteen minutes before cutting, and cover it with a cloth for the first five, which softens the very top and is how Bulgarians serve it.

Notes

Roll each rope loosely and do not compress the coil; the air between the layers is what keeps a banitsa from turning into a dense slab. Work with one sheet of filo at a time under a damp cloth. Do not salt the filling, since sirene is salty enough to season the entire pie; taste the cheese first if you are substituting feta, and rinse it if it is very salty. The yoghurt-and-egg wash poured over the top before baking is not optional in Bulgaria and is what distinguishes the finished surface from a plain buttered filo pie. It keeps for three days and reheats well in a moderate oven.

The Gastrographer

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