There are a few cooking methods that fascinate me beyond words. They might not be the rocket science but in my book they are fairly close: it took a freaking genius to break the ground, and thanks to the group of talented and dedicated people the pursuit goes on. Take tarhana making, or turning tomato-loaded fermented dough into a winter soup during the fall preservation marathon. When did people start doing this? Who came up with the idea? Why don’t we know the name of the person to whom a prayer should be sent before every winter meal of deliciously tangy and sometimes life saving tarhana? Or, think about making phyllo pastry. Have you ever thought that even before the commercial kind made it to the supermarket shelves there must have been a reliable method to produce phyllo pastry at home?
You have probably read about making the Turkish thin dough yufka used in the savory pies of all sorts. But that, my friends, is only the prelude to the real heights of the dough making when you set your rolling pin aside and rely on nothing but your hands to make the phyllo pastry. In Turkey this technique is used by the professional börek makers but also by the home cooks keeping the tradition of çarşaf böreği (“sheet” savory pie) brought by their forefathers that arrived to Turkey from the Balkans, where börek making has been proliferating since time immemorial.
It was in Bosnia and Herzegovina where my first introduction to börek (or, rather burek) took place: just like in Turkey there börek making and eating is institutionalized through the specialty establishments called buregdzinica (börekçi in Turkey). In fact burek in Bosnia refers only to the meat pies while the rest of the pies are called pita. Traditional pitas in Bosnia are conveniently called by the “staring” ingredient in the filling, and their names make sense to anyone speaking a Slavic language: sirnica comes stuffed with cottage cheese, zeljanica combines spinach and cheese, krompiruša features potatoes while tikvenica is stuffed with zucchini. Bosnian pitas are shaped as huge snails fitted into a round tray. After I had my share of the Bosnian savory pies during the three weeks there I was dying to learn how you make one. Luckily, in Bosnia and Herzegovina you are never too far from a kitchen where börek is lovingly made from scratch.
My impromptu börek lesson took place at a small family-run pension in a little village of Podvelezje, in the midst of the towering peaks of the Velez mountains and a brief drive away from Mostar. Mevlida, the hostess of the place treats her guests to the simple home-cooked food complete with her savory pies and giant round breads she bakes daily. A huge table covered with 2 clean sheets takes a good part of the large Mevlida’s kitchen, yet it is the only extravaganza as the rest of the kitchen equipment suggests the post-war minimalism. Gas stove, old oven, sink, refrigerator and a shelf that stores Mevlida’s essential pantry: large bags of flour, bottles of sunflower oil, cassettes of eggs, salt and the seasoning the Balkan home-cooks swear by - Vegeta (mix of finely ground dry vegetables and salt known as tuzot in Turkey).
The timing was perfect as Mevlida just started mixing the dough ingredients when I entered the kitchen. Flour, water, salt and a bit of sunflower oil turned into a wet shaggy mass that Mevlida was kneading vigorously. She was pressing the dough with her right palm against the left one as women used to do when washing clothes before the machines were invented. The washing motion was altered by smashing of the dough against the table. Now and then the unceremoniously handle dough was placed in a large bowl, and Mevlida was vigorously shaking the bowl making the dough hit the sides of the bowl. The results of this earnest kneading were very rewarding: the fairly hydrated dough looked smooth and did not stick at all. Finally, Mevlida put the dough in a large container and shook it. The dough relaxed, took the shape of the container and was left to be for at least an hour.
Mevlida started rolling the dough with the long rolling pin akin to Turkish oklava just as one would roll yufka. Once the dough significantly thinned out to about 3-4 mm Mevlida rolled the dough around the pin, lifted the pin and while keeping it horizontal waved it like a flag, so the dough continued becoming thinner and thinner under its own weight. But all of this paled in comparison to what followed.
Mevlida set her rolling pin aside and started pulling the dough by hand. When you see it happening in front of your eyes the act appears to be a big leap of faith. The initial attempts to pull the edges of the dough meet serious resistance: the dough lets you pull it far, but as soon as you set it free the dough goes back to its initial state. Patience pays off, and after 2-3 full circles Mevlida made around the table pulling the edges of the dough I could see the amazing transformation of a thin dough into an unidentifiable foil butterfly-wings-thin. A few minutes later the dough covered all of the Mevlida’s huge table. Now, what do you do with this thinnest ever dough stretched on a huge table? Well, that’s why there is a huge sheet of fabric under the dough
Mevlida sprinkled a bit of sunflower oil and cornmeal all over the phyllo pastry and then arranged the stuffing of the cottage cheese moistened by the raw eggs. Then she pulled one of the sheet edges up, and the dough rolled down hiding the stuffing inside. Mevlida pulled the sheet down as the roll reached the desired thickness and then with a sharp paper knife she chopped off the roll, shaped it into a snail and transferred to the tray to continue with the rest of the rolled dough.
In fact, Mevlida rolled the pastry to already a pretty thin state using the oklava, the skill women in Bosnia and Turkey used to take for granted. By doing so she broke the tension in the gluten chains with the forceful movements of the long rolling pin so her hand-pulling stage looked more like finishing the job half-done. But it is not unlikely so see someone hand-pulling the dough almost from the beginning.
For instance, Turkish professional börekçi (börek maker) do just that: they roll the dough into a large pancake, thoroughly brush it with oil and then stretch it into the cling-film-thin phyllo pastry. In the hands of a professional making phyllo pastry becomes a shaman act when the usta lifts a sheet of dough, swirls it around himself and then splashes against the table where the dough lands one piece without a single hole and seriously enlarged. What these guys do is so spectacular that it is only fare when they become guests of a Turkish culinary TV show and give the audience a break from the wordy hosts and a chance to witness something breathtaking at last.
The miracle of dough stretching has got pretty scientific grounds. Gluten in the flour helps the dough stretch without tearing and bounce back at the same time. That’s why one should use strong high-gluten flour to make phyllo pastry. Vigorous kneading demonstrated by Mevlida is critical to help gluten develop and make the dough elastic yet extendable, and therefore you do need to be patient and use all the muscle power you have while kneading the dough. Gluten formation also takes place when the dough rests (the whole idea behind no-knead bread) that’s why it is important to let the dough relax for at least an hour and possibly overnight as Mevlida often does. And finally, once the dough is ready to be rolled you brush it with a bit of oil to aid stretching. In Turkey commercial börek boasts the grease hard to replicate at home exactly because the royal amount of liquid fat is needed to create the royal flakes.
To my big surprise one fine day I found our kitchen helper and my mother-in-law pulling the phyllo pastry for çarşaf böreği, they explained to me even before I asked anything. There was a cloth spread on our long dining table sitting 10. I got myself closer and saw the whole process I witnessed in the mountains of Bosnia: rolling, pulling the dough, spreading out the stuffing and then pulling the edges of the cloth up - my mother-in-law and her helper being on the opposite sides of the table. The dough rolled over the stuffing, and the two perfect rolls met right in the middle of the cloth. Boşnak böreği (Bosnian savory pie), they mentioned another name Turks use to define this pie, and for that part I did not need any explanation.
