His puff pastry majesty – Burek!
The story of food has sweetened us these days, and in the new blog, we bring you a text about another I-can-freely-say specialty characteristic of this area, burek! There are serious debates about who is responsible for the fact that we enjoy burek today and that burek has become widely known in this area.
In Greece it will be called bugaca, bureki, or burekakija, neighbors from Bulgaria have their version which they call byurek, while in Albania it is called birek or lakror. In Turkey, it officially appears in written records from the beginning of the 16th century (although there is a belief that it was on the sultan's table in the 15th century). It was the Turkish name for puff pastry dishes "börek" that became the basis for burek as we know it today.
Guided by the analogy that we call puff pastry dishes burek, we came to an astonishing discovery! Believe it or not, there are records that the people who first greased their mustaches with burek are Chinese! Namely, in the manual for food preparation intended for the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan (1215 - 1294) and the founder of the Chinese Yuan dynasty, a recipe for burek (or at least a dish very similar to burek) was found. In that food preparation manual, they called the burek "Pieh-lieh kueh."
image source: niskevesti.rs
How did burek conquer the world?
Although we reached Kublai Khan in our search for the origin of burek, it is fair to say that the Turks are responsible for the fact that burek conquered Europe and the world. Already in the 17th century, the guild of Istanbul buregdzija numbered over 4000 people who worked in about 200 shops with over 135 specialized furnaces just for burek!
The Turks standardized burek for the first time. Namely, after Bajazit's rule, during the reign of Sultan Selim I, burek was standardized into two types: burek of 641 grams or "shorbala", ie burek of 834 grams or "varakla". The first was made by pre-cooking in water, while the second was made by stacking puff pastry in an oven.
Today we say that we live in a consumer society with a large variety of products. Just try to imagine what it was like to walk around Istanbul in the 16th century when the smell of oven-shops spread through the streets, and different types of burek were baked in the ovens: burek made of chicken, burek with eggs, various sweet bureks, burek with onion, leek, baklava burek spinach, burek with cheese or maybe burek with zucchini. I have listed only some species from the wide range of bureks of that time.
In the Balkans, burek was first mentioned in records from Skopje in 1452. A few decades later, burek appeared in Novi Pazar and Sarajevo, more precisely in 1489. Only 9 years later, burek has its premiere in Niš, when the world gets to know the round burek! It was made by the widely known Turkish baker Mehmed Oglu from Istanbul.
source: nova.rs
Round burek from Niš or Sarajevo wrapped burek?
As I have already mentioned above, the round burek had its world premiere in Niš in 1489, when it was made by the famous burek master Mehmed Oglu from Istanbul.
Round burek is prepared traditionally empty, stuffed with minced, stewed meat or with cheese. Burek pans usually weigh about 2 kg larger or 1 kg smaller and is usually cut into quarters. In addition to traditional flavors, in recent times we also get experimental flavors such as burek with Nutella, „eurokrem burek“ or pizza burek!
In the Anton bakery in Niš, burek produced by burek masters is unofficially the best burek in Serbia. Your host traveled to Niš on this test to confirm the claim. It was worth the trip!
An interesting event called "Burekdžijada" is held every year in Niš. The event is competitive (the best burek is made), and in 2005, at the same event, the largest burek ever was made - a burek of 100 kg, 2 meters in diameter!
Surely you have heard the saying that burek is only made of meat and that everything else is pies ?! In Bosnia and Herzegovina, burek is made from meat and is rolled into horseshoes or spirals. The minced meat is wrapped in thin crusts, stewed with onions, and later the crusts are twisted. The same pastry filled with other ingredients will be called pie (pastry with cheese - cheese pie, pastry with potatoes - potato pie, etc.).
Unfortunately, dear reader, I did not reach Sarajevo for burek to make a final judgment about it! Whether Sarevski burek is better than round burek from Niš will remain a mystery, at least for me!
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