Dada’s Banitsa Recipe (Bulgarian Cheese Pie)
This is the Bulgarian style of Cheese Pie in a more savory taste worth to try!
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup Sunflower oil or melted unsalted butter
- 5 pcs Eggs
- 400 gms Greek Feta Cheese or Sirene (Bulgarian White Brined Cheese)
- 500 gms Greek Yogurt or Bulgarian Yogurt (if you have)
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 1 pack Or 500 gms of Phyllo Sheet
- 1 tbsp To 2 tbsp of Sparkling Water or Carbonated Water
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, beat 4 eggs.First, add the yogurt and next, whisk until smooth.
- Second, crumble the feta but not too small size, to have some sort of cube size will be good for filling.
- Third, mix the crumbled feta cheese, baking soda, and sparkling water/carbonated water along with eggs and yogurt. Don’t overmix as it will melt the feta cheese quickly.
- There are 2 ways to prepare your Phyllo sheets on the table, either first; dust it with flour or second; use the plastic cover of the Phyllo sheet, unroll.
- Before brushing the top sheet with oil, first, flip the next sheet and then, gently brush with oil, each of the corner side.After that, back to the top sheet, and then gently brush with oil the entire sheet especially the corner. The purpose of doing that to ensure that the next sheet won’t stick
- Next, add 3 1/2 tablespoons of feta yogurt mix to fit in the sheet then, lightly brush it to ensure that all crumbled feta cheese will be distributed accordingly.Next, roll the sheet from one corner to another and place it to the corner of the round pan. Repeat the same steps for the remaining sheets until you fill-up the round pan.
- Once completed, beat the remaining 1 egg and brush it on top of the sheets until it fully coated. Follow the same thing with the remaining oil, brush it on the sheets till fully coated.
- Heat the oven on 180C/356F and put the banitsa inside the oven.
- Let it bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the top is golden brown. Or until the wooden toothpick inserted in the center and comes out clean.
- Allow to cool down for about 30 mins. And ready to serve.TIP: To make sure that you fit all sheets in a round pan, use 11″ x 3″ round tin/pan. Or else, you can do as what I did as you can see on the photos, I used aluminum foil to make the sheets stick together from the center.