Banitsa (pastry) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Banitsa is a traditional Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n food prepared by layering a mixture of whisked eggs

Egg (food)

Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

and pieces of cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....

between filo pastry and then baking it in an oven.

Traditionally, lucky charms are put into the pastry on certain occasions, particularly on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

, the first day of Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

, or New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...

. These charms may be coins or small symbolic objects (e.g., a small piece of a dogwood

Dogwood

The genus Cornus is a group of about 30-60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods. Most dogwoods are deciduous trees or shrubs, but a few species are nearly herbaceous perennial subshrubs, and a few of the woody species are evergreen...

branch with a bud, symbolizing health or longevity). More recently, people have started writing happy wishes on small pieces of paper and wrapping them in tin foil. Wishes may include happiness, health, or success throughout the new year.

Banitsa is served for breakfast

Breakfast

Breakfast is the first meal taken after rising from a night's sleep, most often eaten in the early morning before undertaking the day's work...

with plain yogurt, ayran

Ayran

Ayran or laban is a cold beverage of yogurt mixed with cold water and sometimes salt; it is popular in many Central Asian, Middle Eastern and South-eastern European countries....

, or boza

Boza

Boza, also bosa , is a popular fermented beverage in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and also Poland and Lithuania...

. It can be eaten hot or cold. Some varieties include banitsa with spinach

Spinach

Spinach is an edible flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant , which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions...

(spanachena banitsa) or the sweet version, banitsa with milk

Milk

Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...

(mlechna banitsa) or pumpkin

Pumpkin

A pumpkin is a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae . It commonly refers to cultivars of any one of the species Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata, and is native to North America...

(tikvenik).

Dough

Traditionally, banitsa is made with homemade or commercially made pastry sheets that are prepared from a baker's hard dough including flour, eggs, and water. At home the sheets can be spread by continuously pulling the sheet of dough with one's fingers until it becomes less than a millimeter thin, or by using a rolling-pin in several stages with vegetable oil sprinkled between the partially spread leaves, or by a very difficult technique comprising waving movements of the entire sheet over the head of the cook, which resembles pizza dough making techniques. Commercially available sheets are mechanically spread and somewhat dried before packing.

Another sort of banitsa is called tutmanik (тутманик) and is made with leavened sheets. The usual filling is cheese.

Filling

The traditional filling is made of crushed white cheese (sirene

Sirene

Sirene/ Sirenje or known as "white brine sirene" .Salads: Shopska salad with tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, onions and sirene. Ovcharska salad with the above mentioned vegetables, cheese, ham, boiled eggs and olives. Tomatoes with sirene is a traditional light salad during the summer.Eggs:...

), yoghurt, and eggs. Sometimes baking soda is added to the yogurt, which makes the yogurt rise (as the baking soda reacts with the acid in yogurt). The addition of baking soda results in a fluffier filling.

Vegetable fillings include spinach, sorrel, nettle

Nettle

Nettles constitute between 24 and 39 species of flowering plants of the genus Urtica in the family Urticaceae, with a cosmopolitan though mainly temperate distribution. They are mostly herbaceous perennial plants, but some are annual and a few are shrubby...

s, leek

Leek

The leek, Allium ampeloprasum var. porrum , also sometimes known as Allium porrum, is a vegetable which belongs, along with the onion and garlic, to family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Allioideae...

s, onion

Onion

The onion , also known as the bulb onion, common onion and garden onion, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. The genus Allium also contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion The onion...

s, or sauerkraut

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut , directly translated from German: "sour cabbage", is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. It has a long shelf-life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid...

. The cabbage variant is called zelnik (зелник) and the leek or onion variant is called luchnik (лучник).

In some regions of Bulgaria, a filling with rice is made. There are also meat fillings with minced meat, onions, and mushroom

Mushroom

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...

s. Sweet fillings with apple

Apple

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...

s (similar to apple pie

Apple pie

An apple pie is a fruit pie in which the principal filling ingredient is apples. It is sometimes served with whipped cream or ice cream on top...

or strudel

Strudel

A strudel is a type of layered pastry with a — most often sweet — filling inside, often served with cream. It became well known and gained popularity in the 18th century through the Habsburg Empire....

) or pumpkin with sugar, walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

s and cinnamon

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...

exist as well. In some regions, only the walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon are used. The apple variant is called shtrudel (щрудел), and the pumpkin variant is tikvenik (тиквеник).

Banitsa with milk is made by baking the leaves soaked in milk with sugar and vanilla

Vanilla

Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...

Preparation

In a large greased baking dish, individual sheets are layered one by one with small amounts of filling and vegetable oil between them. After half of the sheets are placed in the pan, a large portion of the filling is spooned onto the leaves and is then covered with the remaining sheets and filling in the same manner. The pastry is then baked at 200–250 °C. In some recipes, just before the banitsa is finished, a glass of lemonade

Lemonade

Lemonade is a lemon-flavored drink, typically made from lemons, water and sugar.The term can refer to three different types of beverage:...

or mineral water is poured into the tray, and the baking continues for several more minutes.

An alternative method of preparation is taking each sheet of dough, laying it out flat and sprinkling some of the filling on it. Then, the sheet is rolled up into a tight roll with the filling on the inside of the roll. The long roll is then taken and rolled up in a circle. This first sheet of dough is then placed in the baking pan. The process is repeated with the remaining sheets of dough and each consecutive roll is placed around the first one in the pan. The resulting shape resembles a spiral (see photo). The banitsa is then sprinkled with vegetable oil and baked.

Symbolism

In Bulgaria, banitsa is a symbol of Bulgarian cuisine and traditions.

Traditionally, Bulgarians prepare and serve banitza on two holidays – Christmas and New Year's Eve. On these days, people add kusmeti (literally lucks, meaning fortunes, lucky charms) into the banitsa. The lucky charms are usually small pieces of dogwood branch, which vary in numbers of buds on them. They symbolize health and longevity. The branches are hidden inside the banitsa, and the banitsa is then baked. When ready, the banitsa is cut in a way that each piece contains a dogwood branch. A wish is associated with each branch and the different number of buds on the branch helps to recognize the corresponding wish. The wishes include happiness, health, success, travel, etc. The banitsa is then spun on the table and everyone takes the piece which is in front of them when the spinning stops. Then they find their fortune inside the piece – the fortunes predict what one is to expect from the new year. The most common fortunes are "health", "love", "marriage", "baby", "journey", "wealth", etc.

Alternatively or in addition to the kusmeti, some add a coin or simply little pieces of paper with written fortunes on them (just like the ones in the fortune cookies). In this case, they are wrapped in tin foil to preserve them during baking.

The word "banitsa" is used as a simile

Simile

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...

for something (mainly documents and paperwork) crumpled, or badly maintained. For example, a police officer can make a remark to someone about letting his or her passport "become like a banitsa" (станал е на баница); a teacher might say this about a pupil's notebook.
The same can be said about a very badly crushed car after an accident.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Dough

Filling

Preparation

Symbolism

See also

External links