My favorite recipe from our family cookbook—and certainly one of the most labor-intensive. But this dough, so tender and airy, always rises so well even under a thick layer of filling, which might be worth the extra effort, don't you think? This recipe came to us from my father's friends' family and didn’t have a name at the time, so in our cookbook, it’s simply called Marina's Delicious Pie, named after the wonderful woman who introduced it to us.
For one pie (in a 32×38 cm baking sheet), you will need:
3 cups (450 g) flour;
21 g fresh or 7 g dry yeast;
1 cup milk or whey;
2 eggs;
2 tablespoons sugar;
1 teaspoon salt;
200 g softened margarine.
For the filling:
About 1.5 kg white cabbage;
3-4 eggs.
Dissolve the yeast in slightly warm milk (no more than 40℃ / 104°F) and leave for 10 minutes. Beat the eggs with sugar, add salt, milk with yeast, and flour, and knead a smooth dough—this can be done by hand or in a mixer. Roll out the dough into a rectangular sheet about 1 cm thick. Divide the margarine into 4 parts. Using a wide knife with a rounded end, spread one-quarter of the margarine over the dough and then fold the dough envelope-style (fold the top third to the center, then the bottom third to the center, then the left third to the center, then the right). Roll out the dough again into the same rectangular shape, spread the next quarter of margarine, then fold and repeat the process two more times. Place the folded dough into a bowl, cover it tightly, and leave it to rise for an hour or until it doubles in size.
For the filling, finely chop the white cabbage into small cubes, sauté it in butter, cool it down, and add hard-boiled and finely chopped eggs. Knead the risen dough a bit to better distribute the margarine, then roll it out to fit the baking sheet, add the filling, and close the pie. I fold it in the middle and from both sides. My favorite filling for this dough is the cabbage with eggs. This pie can also be made with meat or any other filling that isn’t too moist or sweet.
Let the pie rise for half an hour, then brush the top with egg yolk and bake in a preheated oven at 180℃ / 356°F for about 40 minutes, or for a dry wooden skewer.
Enjoy your meal!
