My first try on this Georgian cheese bread. Easy but delicious! Thanks for introducing me to this cuisine Ayrton.

Ingredients

Dough:

• 500g wheat flour (Type 550)

• 7g dry yeast

• 12g salt

• 15g sugar

• 240g water

• 100g warm milk

• 12g olive oli (1tbsp)

• 1 egg (to brush)

Filling

Often recipes list sulguni cheese as main ingredient with ca. 20% grinded mozarella. I dont have a source for that type of cheese so I used other variants.

The following fillings are not scaled down. each filling is enough for the full dough. If you wanna try out all of them, reduce the amount!

v1

• 400g feta
• 150g mozarella (grinded)

Note: I found fillings like that quite often in combination with a full egg on top. Maybe this makes a lot of difference, but personally this was my least favorite cheese mix.

v2

• 200g feta
• 250g cottage cheese
• 150g mozarella (grinded)

For me this was a big step up from the first version. A very delicious topping. Again I only used an egg yolk instead of the whole egg. Next time Ill change that with this filling for sure.

v3

• 600g mozarella (grinded)

This version was the closest to what we had in the restaurante. Tastewise the difference was minimal, but consistency wise the mozarella was not melty enough. It got hard the moment I mixed in the egg yolk, while in the restaurante the cheese styed rinsy until fully cooled down. I assume this should have been a mix of grinded mozarella and a more fat chees that keeps the consistency longer. Even gouda would be an option to try next time..

Instructions

Dough

Weight the flour, warm milk and water in a bowl. Add the sugar and dry yeast and mix it into the fluids. Let it rest in a warm environment until bubbles start to form - the yeast activated. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead for a few minutes.

Cover it with a wet kitchen towel and let it rest in a warm environment for at least an hour. The dough must rise to twice or three times its size.

Filling

In the meanwhile, prepare the filling. Weight, grind and mix the cheeses to your liking.

Forming

Preheat the oven to 230 degrees.

Split the dough into 4 equal parts. Roll them to balls and cover them with a humid kitchen towel.

On a lightly dusted surface roll them out to an oval, roughly 25x35cm. Add a quater of the filling and spread it, leaving about 3cm on the edge free.

Now fold the edges of the dough over the filling, twisting the two ends a bit so nothing will rin out during baking.

Brush the dough with the mixed egg.

Bake them for 20 minutes.

You can brush the inside of the dough edges (before you fold them) as well. Once the dough risese the inner side gets exposed. They are much lighter in color, brushing it up front would make it more uniform.

Next Time…

• The dough was too thick, especially the bottom. Split the dough into 6 parts next time (and use 1,5x the filling)