How to cook real Caucasian khachapuri at home

Bread cakes are very popular all over the world. Most often they are baked in the countries of Asia and the Middle East. But due to their taste, they can not leave anyone indifferent. One of the most beloved types of such baking is Caucasian khachapuri.

Khachapuri is a national Georgian dish, which is a hearty, stuffed wheat cheese cake. From the main ingredients comes the name of the product - "hacho" - cottage cheese, and "puri" - bread.

There are many cooking recipes, according to some estimates there are about 20 varieties, which differ not only in the fillings used, but also in the cooking method, form, dough. As a rule, it depends on the region where they are prepared. This is how Khachapuri is distinguished in Ajarian, Abkhazian, Batumi, Imereti, Megrelian and others.

Despite such an unusual and slightly complicated name, preparing the dish is quite simple. Therefore, knowing the technology and components, it can be baked at home in your own kitchen.

Key secrets and cooking technology

Some argue that real cheese cake can only be tasted in its homeland, the Caucasus. Others believe that the main thing is that it is cooked by the skillful hands of a Georgian cook. In fact, the most delicious and appetizing will be only the one that is made with your own hands from your favorite products.

Since there is no single recipe, then there is no exact cooking technology, you need to know the main points - how make the dough, stuffing, choose a shape.

Dough

The dough for the very first khachapuri was made of two components - water and flour. Over time, the recipes have changed and improved. Traditional is considered a fresh dough prepared on the basis of the Caucasian fermented milk product - yogurt. You can do it yourself. To do this, slightly warm up 2.5-3 liters of fresh milk, pour 2 tbsp into it. l oily sour cream, close and wrap in a warm towel. After a couple of hours, put in a cold place and let the mass thicken. But most often, instead of yogurt, kefir, yogurt or liquid sour cream are used.

To make khachapuri more magnificent and ruddy, yeast can be added to the dough. In this case, butter, sugar and milk are put in the batch. These three ingredients give the dough softness and elasticity. Sieve the flour before adding to saturate it with oxygen. The dough should have a soft, in no case clogged structure.

After kneading the dough, put it to rest for 2-3 hours. If made with yeast - leave it warm, if you choose a layered or fresh version, you can put it in the refrigerator.

Filling

The basis of any filling for khachapuri is cheese. For classic flat cakes, Imeretian is used, but can be replaced with other types. Young cheeses are best suited - soft or pickled, for example, Adyghe, suluguni, mozzarella, feta cheese, Kobi and even homemade sour milk curd.

Often, several types of cheese are added to the filling at once. This is especially important when one of them has a dense and solid structure. Sometimes, for homogeneity of the mass, an egg is driven in, and for piquancy, combine it with a variety of chopped greens.

Khachapuri Formation

The baking form can be different.It can be open or closed, in the form of a boat, envelope, square, round and even oval. All are united by one rule: the thinner the tortilla, the tastier it is.

Opened items are most often baked in the oven or stove, closed items are cooked in a pan or in a slow cooker.

Cooking

• In the pan. Take a frying pan with a thick bottom - stone or cast iron. For this type, make a fresh dough of yogurt, and the form is always closed. On each side, they are fried for 10-15 minutes until a golden crust is formed. At the end, generously grease with butter.
• In the oven. Scones made from yeast or puff pastry are baked in the oven. The cheese in the filling should melt, and the dough will rise and brown. The cooking time of khachapuri in the oven depends on the size and can last 25-35 minutes. The temperature is 180-200 degrees. When removing the product from the oven, make a hole in it and insert a piece of butter.
• In a slow cooker. As in a pan, in the multicooker khachapuri cook one at a time. On a greased bottom, put one tortilla with cheese and bake for 20 minutes in the “Baking” mode. Then it flips over and cooks for 15 minutes in the same mode.
• In the air grill. The air grill must first be heated to a temperature of 225 degrees. Then put the formed khachapuri on the middle wire rack and bake for 15 minutes.

Classic Khachapuri with Cheese

It has been said more than once that there are many different recipes for khachapuri. For each Caucasian region, its recipe is the best and unique. In our country, several popular types of cheese cakes are known. One of them is Georgian Khachapuri. The cooking technology is simple, and some of the ingredients inherent in oriental cuisine can be replaced by our traditional ones.

• Sift flour into the dishes and add a bag of baking powder, salt and sugar. Mix everything with a spoon and make a small depression in the middle.
• Beat the egg with a fork and pour into the flour, add vegetable oil, yogurt or kefir. Knead a soft and elastic dough, allow to rest for an hour in the refrigerator, having previously wrapped in cling film.
• Grate all the cheeses and mix. Divide the dough into several even parts and roll them 1 cm thick.
• For each cake put 5 tbsp. l cheese mass and pile the edges of the dough.
• Carefully turn the product so that the filling does not spill out, and roll it out slightly with a rolling pin. So do with all parts.
• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, a little grease the baking sheet with butter and put formed khachapuri on it. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

After they are cooked, make an incision in each and put a small piece of oil there.

How to cook khachapuri in ajarian

Adjarian khachapuri have an open boat shape, knead the dough with yeast and bake in the oven. The main difference from the other cakes is that 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking, the raw yolk is poured into the filling. During the meal, the ruddy edges of the roll are dipped into it, which gives the dish a special feature.

Ingredients (for two large khachapuri):

• 2.5 tbsp. flour;
• 1 tsp dry yeast;
• 1 tbsp. warm water;
• 0.5 tsp. sugar and salt;
• 50 ml of vegetable oil;
• 3 egg yolks;
• 150 g mozzarella;
• 150 g of feta cheese;
• 150 g Adyghe cheese;
• 100 ml cream or fat milk;
• 50 g of butter.

1. Pour the flour into the dishes, add the dry yeast, sugar, salt and mix well. Add water a little and knead a loose dough.After 10-20 minutes, pour vegetable oil and knead again. Leave warm for 1.5 hours.
2. In the meantime, prepare the filling. We rub all types of cheese on a grater or knead with a fork. In the mass add cream and 1 tbsp. l flour. Mix well, salt and pepper if necessary. Remember that each of the cheeses has its own rich taste, so you need to be careful with spices so as not to overdo it.
3. When the dough increases in volume by 2 times, you can begin to form khachapuri. Divide it into 2 equal parts and roll up the balls. From each we make a boat and put cheese stuffing in the middle. Lubricate the whipped yolk edges.
4. We heat the oven with a baking sheet to 200 degrees. Then we cover the hot form with baking paper and put the khachapuri and bake for 25 minutes. After this time, we make a deepening in each boat and fill it with one yolk.
5. Sent to the oven for another 5-8 minutes. Before serving, grease with butter.

Tasty and simple khachapuri in a pan

Baking khachapuri in the oven is a troublesome and lengthy procedure, since yeast dough is most often used, and it takes a long time to cook. It is much faster and easier to fry Georgian tortillas with cheese in a pan. At the same time they turn out to be just as tasty and mouth-watering.

• 125 ml of kefir;
• 150 ml sour cream;
• 300-400 g of flour;
• 0.5 tsp. salts and soda;
• 1 tbsp. l Sahara;
• 150 g butter;
• 250 g of feta cheese;
• 250 g mozzarella or suluguni;
• a bunch of greens to taste.

How to cook:

1. Take 100 g of oil and melt on fire. Mix 125 ml of sour cream and kefir, salt, sugar, soda and ghee. Mix everything well, adding a little sifted flour. Knead the soft dough and set it aside.
2. Prepare the filling: grate the cheese on a fine grater, add the remaining sour cream, 2 tbsp. l soft butter and chopped greens. Mix everything thoroughly and add if necessary.
3. Divide the dough into 4 parts, from each form a cake. Since it is soft, this can be done with your hands, not with a rolling pin.
4. In the center, put a part of the filling in a slide and put it in a skirt on top of the edge. Tie them and turn them gently upside down. Gently roll the resulting bag into a tortilla and transfer to a hot, slightly oiled pan.
5. Cover and fry over medium heat on one side and the other for 7-10 minutes.

Ready to flavor a little khachapuri with ghee, and eat it hot.

Cooking khachapuri with cottage cheese from puff pastry

Today it is fashionable to cook different dishes from puff pastry. Khachapuri is no exception, so there are many recipes that use not traditional fresh or yeast dough, but puff. You can cook it yourself, but it's a long time. Many people prefer to buy a finished product in the store.

• 500 g of ready puff pastry;
• 500 g of cottage cheese;
• 2 chicken eggs;
• 2 tbsp. l sour cream;
• 3 tbsp. l butter;
• some green parsley and dill;
• salt and pepper to taste.

1. We divide the dough into two parts and each roll out a rolling pin into a thin cake. We put one on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, and the other we leave on the board, sprinkled with flour a little.
2. We make cheese filling. In the curd, add one egg, sour cream, 1 tbsp. l soft butter, chopped parsley and dill. Mix everything, salt and pepper. Distribute the finished mass evenly over the surface, cover with a second layer of dough and tightly pinch the edges.
3. We take the second egg, separate the yolk and knock it with a fork. Lubricate them with the entire surface of the product and make several notches on the top layer.
4. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees and bake khachapuri for 20 minutes. After taking it out of the oven, put a piece of butter in the cuts made. Serve hot on the table.

Calorie content and nutritional value

Many women who carefully follow the figure can rarely please themselves with the taste of juicy Caucasian khachapuri.Indeed, its calorie content is considered average - about 270 kcal per 100 grams, so nutritionists do not recommend them to often feast on. But you should know that the energy value depends on the ingredients.

Take the most consumed foods needed to make classic khachapuri. For each, we separately calculate the nutritional value and calorie content.

The table shows that calorie content is more dependent on four main ingredients: flour and butter, type of cheese and fat content of kefir (sour cream, yogurt, yogurt). Each of the cheese varieties differs not only in taste, structure, but also in the number of calories per 100 grams:

• Homemade cottage cheese - 115 kcal.
• Adyghe cheese - 240 kcal.
• Mozzarella - 240 kcal.
• Imereti cheese - 240 kcal.
• Brynza cow - 260 kcal.
• Sheep cheese - 280 kcal.
• Suluguni - 290 kcal.

Thus, to prepare a khachapuri, which will bring minimum harm to your figure, you need:

1. Make stuffing from homemade cottage cheese.
2. Knead the dough on low-fat kefir and roll it very thinly.
3. Bake in the oven using a minimum amount of butter. Do not grease with egg yolk.

5 useful tips

To cook delicious and juicy Caucasian khachapuri at home, you need to know a few little tricks.

1. The dough, whether it is fresh, yeast or puff, should be soft and elastic. If it is too tight, the baked goods will be clogged and tough. The approximate ratio of liquid to flour is 1: 3 (300 grams of flour will go per 100 ml of milk).
2. For frying khachapuri you need to use a pan with a thick bottom. Stone or cast iron is best.
3. For the filling, soft and brine cheeses are used. If you choose cheese with a dense structure - suluguni, mozzarella, you must add softened butter or thick sour cream to them.
4. Baked khachapuri is preferable at high temperatures - from 180 degrees. Then the dish turns crispy and rosy.
5. Serving Caucasian khachapuri always needs to be served hot, as they say “with heat, with heat”, greasing it with plenty of butter. The first 20-30 minutes after oven or frying, the loaf is the most juicy and fragrant.

Georgia is considered the birthplace of khachapuri, respectively, it is often called the Georgian cheese cake. Now many bake the product with other ingredients, so it only remotely resembles a traditional Caucasian dish. Make it from fresh, yeast or puff pastry. Sometimes even pita bread is used.

The shape of the cake can be different: round, oval, square, triangular, in the form of a boat or envelopes. This is not the main thing. Georgian bakers believe that the main component is the skilled hands of the cook, his warm heart and a friendly attitude towards people.

Remember, the most delicious khachapuri that you cook yourself for your near and dear people. Use your favorite foods and cooking methods.