Albanian Byrek

I grew up eating byrek just about every weekend. My dad, brother, and I would beg my mom to make our favorite version each time so she took turns making spinach & feta, leek, egg & cheese, and tomato & onion byreks. This flaky comfort food reminds me home. Enjoy my family’s classic recipe from Korça 👩‍🍳

Ingredients

Dough
3 cups of flour
1 1/4 cup water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Butter & Oil mixture
3 tbsp butter
3 tsbp olive oil

Tools
Cornstarch
Rolling pin
Long wooden dowel*
16 inch diameter round baking pan**

*I use a 16 inch “cake pan”. I use a combination of a heavy rolling pin and a light and thin wooden dowel from home depot that I’ve cut down to about 30 inches. The dowel really comes in handy when I need to maneuver the large sheet, which is impossibly to do with a rolling pin that is shorter than the sheet or with your hands — the sheet will be very thin, and difficult to handle without this dowel. With the dowel, you’re able to roll the dough around it, allowing you to pick up the whole sheet without ripping or contorting the shape. This is key to rolling the dough out thin enough for this recipe.

**Note that all of my ingredients, both for the dough and the filling, takes into account what will fit into this size pan. If you use a smaller or a bigger pan, you’ll need to alter the quantity of ingredients.

Filling
I’m going to give you a few options here as fillings are interchangeable and don’t impact the rest of the recipe. I’ll help you prepare my old favorite, greens & cheese, and my current favorite, tomato and onion. You can choose whichever filling you prefer and choose-your-own-adventure. If you feel inspired, there are also several other byrek recipes that use egg & cheese, meat, leek, or pumpkin fillings. Spinach & cheese is a classic but tomato & onion is very traditional in my hometown and it’s a bit lighter. You can always make either filling the day before and set aside in the fridge, or you can make it the day of.

If you’re making Tomato & Onion, your filling ingredients will be:

• 8 small / medium Roma tomatoes
• 2 medium onions
• 1 tsp flour
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• About 1/2 cup water

Chop the tomatoes and onions separately into small pieces. Pour a bit of olive oil into a pan and start to cook the onions. After about a minute of sautéing them, pour in the water so that they can simmer and soften. Keep adding water throughout so that the onions never stick to the bottom of the pan.

After about 10 minutes, the onions should be soft. Throw in the tomatoes and add salt and red pepper flakes. Take the flour, dissolve it in two tbsp of water, and pour it into the mixture. This will allow the filling to thicken a bit and ensure the filling will be more or solid when spread out on the dough.

Let the mixture simmer for another 10–12 minutes until both tomatoes and onions are soft, and the liquid has been absorbed. Once done, cover and set aside.

If you’re making Spinach & Cheese, your filling ingredients will be:

Greens

• 5 ounces baby spinach OR 3 green onions OR 1 large leek (choose your own adventure — the most popular is spinach but I actually prefer either leek or green onion). You can also combine them, but you’ll want a third of each.
• Wash, destem (if necessary), and chop your greens into small pieces. Cook on medium heat with a small bit of olive oil until wilted. Set aside.

Dairy

• 3 tbsp of plain yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 large piece of feta cheese — about a 5x5 inch block
• 8 ounces of farmers cheese

In a large bowl, whisk eggs together then and add in farmers cheese. Start to crumble in feta. Next, add in the yogurt. Ensure the consistency is not too wet — if it is, compensate by adding in more crumbled feta.

Add your greens into your dairy mixture. Cover and set aside in the fridge.

Methodology

Dough

1. Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl. Gradually stir in water and oil. Use your hands to mix well until it forms a doughy consistency and there are no clumps.
2. Once the consistency is structured enough, you can move the dough onto a flat surface and knead with your hands until smooth and combined. You can add more flour or more water to ensure it’s the perfect consistency, as needed.
3. Once you have your ball of dough, brush it all around with a bit of olive oil and place it covered in the fridge.

Creating two sets of mini sheets

1. In order to prep for our filo sheets, we need to get our butter and olive oil mixture ready. Melt the 3 tbsp of butter in a small pan. Once cooled, add the olive oil. Set this mixture aside — we’ll get back to it once we’ve created separate filo sheets.
2. Take the dough out of the fridge and cut it into two equal pieces. Put one of the halves back into the fridge until we’re ready for it — you just need one half for now, and the longer the dough spends in the fridge the easier it will be for you to roll it out.
3. Split the half dough into 6 equal smaller balls. Make sure you spread cornstarch or flour on your working space so that the dough does not stick. Using a rolling pin, first flatten then roll out each ball into a small disk about 5–7 inches in diameter or the size of your palm. The exact size is not important, as long as each sheet is equal.
4. Grab your butter and oil mixture and start spreading it over each sheet, placing one sheet on top of the other with the butter side facing down. Ensure that each sheet is placed evenly over the next, and stretch or move the sheets if needed. Once you’ve stacked all of your sheets, join together the bottom and top sheet by pressing them into each other, to make one big stack.
5. Cover the stack and place in the fridge, exchanging it for the rest of the other half of the dough.
6. Repeat steps 2–4 with the other half of the dough.

Creating your large sheets & pouring your filling

1. Exchange the stack in the fridge for the stack you just finished and place your fresh stack in the fridge. Now we’ll start rolling out the stack in one really large singular sheet. The butter and oil mixture between the individual sheets will create the flaky, buttery, goodness we know and love once we flatten the stack out.
2. Flatten the stack with your rolling pin then start to roll it out. You’ll want to roll out the dough to be about 2 inches bigger than the pan on all sides. Your dough is going to be really large — here is where your dowel will come in handy to ensure you are rolling it evenly and you can maneuver it.
3. Once you’ve rolled out your dough, you’re ready to lightly butter the pan, and transfer the dough to the pan using your dowel. Make sure that the dough spills over into the sides, as we’re going to use this later to create our crispy sides. Once you’ve placed your dough into the pan, you can spread your filing unto that bottom sheet. Don’t overdo it with the filling — overfilling leads to a heavy bottom sheet and the structural integrity of your byrek will fall apart.
4. We’re almost there! Set the oven to preheat to 380 while we finish the top sheet. You’ll repeat the same exact process rolling out the sheet but go ahead and make it even bigger, maybe around 2–3 inches larger than the pan on all sides, because we’ll want to create creasing so that you’ll get a supremely crunchy and flaky top layer.

Depending on the filling you choose — left is tomato onion, right is greens & cheese

Assembly & Baking

1. Once you’re done rolling, it’s time to place your sheet over the filling. For this one, you’re keeping the dough inside the pan, so no need to go over. As you release the dough over the filling, release it in a side to side motion to create wrinkles and creasing throughout. Be sure to cover from edge to edge, so that the filling is entirely under the sheet.
2. Finally, we fold the edges into that beautiful Byrek braid. Start anywhere you want and use your forefinger and your thumb to dog-ear where you will start.Then move along the curved edge and pinch a half-inch of dough next to the dog-ear, stretching it toward you if necessary before folding it back so it overlaps the dog-eared edge. Continue to pinch and fold the dough in half-inch sections, slightly overlapping each previous fold, until you’ve completed the circle. Once finished, use the remainder of the butter and oil mixture to spread over the top of the Bryek.

The Byrek is ready to pop in the oven for about 30–45 minutes, or until golden. It will rise significantly in the oven, but once you take it out it will fall back down and the steam inside will result in gooey and soft dough inside and a crispy and flakey crust outside — the best of both worlds!