Self made filo dough brings burek to the next level. Not only does the dough itself just tastes better, its is way easier to roll burik into the traditional form.

As stretching the dough does not result in very yummy pictures Ill start with one from the final result:

Ingredients

Dough:

• 500g fine wheat flour
• 325g water
• 6g salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil (forgot it and worked fine)

For the filling you can either use this spinach-cheese or meat burek recipes. You also can make kaerntner-kasnudel filling. Just add a bit of feta and you are good to go.

Instructions

Dough:

Mix all ingredients together. I let them knead for about 6 minutes at mid level. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes covered with a wet towel. If the dough dries on the outside it is very annoying later on.

Portioning:

After the rest form little dough balls, cover them in oil and let them rest for another 30 minutes.

This actually sound easier than it is and I had to try it a few times to figure out a good routine.

Get a big plate and cover it in oil. Place your bowl with the dough inside on a kitchen scale and tare it. With wet hands, grab some dough and form a nice ball. By reading the kitchen scale you can see how much dough you actually got. You can add/remove dough to get the amount you want. For the pictures below I used roughly 125g per ball. Note that the size of the balls do matter. The bigger the balls the more space you will need to thin the dough out. I would suggest to start with small ones roughly 125g (shown in the pictures below).

Place a formed ball on the oily plate, wash your hands from any sticking dough, tare the kitchen scale and repeat the process. Keep them at some distance as they will get wider during the rest. Once you formed all balls use a brush to fully cover them in oil (I tried to roll them around in oil the first time, though that is way more messy than using a brush).

Let them rest for 30 minutes.

Thinning

To thin out the dough, oil your surface you will work on. Get a well oiled plastic bench scraper and remove one ball from the oiled plate. Note that the dough will stick to the plate but already is super stretchy. Removing it with your bare hands does work though might deform your dough balls. This can make stretching the dough way harder than it has to be.

Once you got the dough of the plate, use your hands to gently stretch it out a bit with your hands. Make sure that the middle does not get too thin or it will rip open very easily later on.

Place the dough in the middle of your working area. Using both hands, get one part of an edge and pull it outsides. Press it onto the surface, grab the next part and repeat the progress.

Once there is no dough left that you can thin out, you are done. In case there is thick dough left in an unusable place, just remove the part.

The dough above was from a 125g ball.

Filling

Lay the filling in a line, and bring the outer edge of the dough above it. Very very gently roll the dough inwards until you have at least two layers of dough around the filling. Once you got that second layer, you can play around with the dough a bit more. For example you can lift it a bit and pull it to the side to make it longer in case you have more dough going outwards in the middle as I did.

If you have a lot of extra dough on the edges or on the ends of the roll, just rip or cut it away. Thick dough does not taste well in the burek.

You can twist the burek during giving it its final form. This way the dough will not stick together that well and it will be easier to rip it off and eat it layer for layer after baking it. Totally worth it!

Tips

If you notice that the dough is ripping or not stretching that good anymore, go and work on another area and come back later to the current one. The gluten will have some time to relax and it will be easier after a few minutes to work on the problematic area again.

Use a oiled bench scraper to remove the dough balls from the oiled plate. This way you will not damage the ball and stretching will be way easier.

Next time

I think it would be way better to use a dryer dough (65% hydration, maybe even just 60%), form nice balls and afterward place them in oil. Done, 65% works very well, even without oil.