Have you ever tried making a cheese pie with homemade thin pastry sheets, all from scratch? If you haven't and you want to, then this is not the right place for you, because my sheets didn't turn out quite as thin as they were supposed to, hihihi. 😆
For this kind of pie made with hand-stretched pastry people don't use yeast, but since I know I can't stretch the dough thin enough, I add a little yeast and it turns out great. 🥰
For the dough, I used:
600 g of flour
1 teaspoon of dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
350 ml of lukewarm water
First, I poured all the flour into a mixing bowl and made a well in the middle. I put the yeast and sugar in the well, then poured in all the lukewarm water I needed. I left it for a little while to activate, until it formed nice little bubbles, and then added the salt and kneaded everything together.
The dough is a little firmer, and it might seem like it needs more liquid, but it doesn't. It shouldn't be soft like dough for delicate pastries such as crescent rolls, strudels, etc. I covered the bowl with a dry kitchen towel and left it aside to rise a little.
For the mixture that the balls of dough would later stay in for a while, I used:
100 ml of olive oil
50 g of butter
I put both into a larger pot over low heat and stirred until the butter melted and the mixture came together. I set it aside to cool down a little.
Once the dough had risen a little, while I was melting the butter and, of course, having my morning coffee while scrolling through blogs here 🥰, I divided it into 12 pieces, shaped them into balls, and placed them in the pot with the barely lukewarm oil mixture. I coated them well, pressed down with my hand, and covered them with a cloth. I left them like that for the next half hour while I put on a load of laundry, made the bed, had breakfast...
For the filling, I used:
400 g of homemade cow's milk cheese
70 g of homemade kajmak
4 eggs
You can also use more cheese, depending on how much you have and what kind it is, whether it's too strong, salty, aged, sour... So this is really something you can adjust to your taste and this amount was perfect for me this time.
Now comes the most interesting part, stretching the dough into as thin a sheet as possible. This is where I usually fail. Either it isn't thin enough or it tears while I'm stretching it. I get a little frustrated, and then I think about just leaving it all like that, making another coffee and going to the pond to fish. Hihi. But I didn't, and it's important that you don't do it either, because the result will be more than excellent. You'll see.
So, on the previously cleaned work surface (you don't need to flour or oil it because the dough balls are greasy enough that they won't stick), I flatten each ball as much as I can with my fingers and palm, and then gently stretch it even thinner, working from the center towards the edges. Real homemade-pie experts can stretch a ball like the one in the picture into a sheet twice this size, but okay, considering this is only the 3rd or 4th time I've made this kind of pie, it's not bad, right?
I filled each one with a heaping spoonful of the prepared cheese filling and rolled them up like crepes. Then I flattened them even more, kind of like when you're playing with Play-Doh and turn a thicker roll into a thinner one.
I prepared a baking tray and lined it with parchment paper. Then I started arranging the filled pastry sheets in the tray from the center, making one big spiral, like a snail shell. I didn't pack them too tightly because they will rise a little from the yeast, and I also pressed them down gently with my hands from the top so they would fill the whole tray nicely. That's when I realized this would actually make two pies, so I took the smallest round baking tray I had and repeated the process.
So, with this amount, you'll get one larger and one smaller, incredibly delicious cheese pie that will disappear from the table before you know it!
Before putting them in the oven, I generously brushed them with the remaining oil and butter mixture. It might seem like too much, but trust me, it isn't. The dough absorbs quite a lot of it.
I baked them in a preheated oven at 200°C for 35-40 minutes. But this depends on the oven, so keep an eye on them and check when they are fully baked. Usually, that’s when they have an even golden color all over.
Bon apetit! 😁