Burek
As Burek in the countries of the former Yugoslavia two different pasta dishes are called.
The word is of Turkish origin and in Turkish means something like “filled puff pastry dish” ( Serbian / Bosnian pita ). It is derived from Börek from Turkish cuisine . In ex-Yugoslavia, however, it is not used exclusively in this sense.
preparation
A burek is a dough dish from the Balkans that is baked on round baking trays and traditionally prepared with meat but also unfilled. Today other ingredients are also used as a filling, such as: B. mushrooms or "pizza mix" (tomatoes, ham and cheese) and (less often) sweet fillings such as cherries or apples.
The main feature is the round, pot-like baking sheet, on which relatively thin sheets of dough with lots of fat and filling are placed on top of one another and at the end "enclosed" with a piece of dough.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina , only the meat-filled variant is usually referred to as burek . The main difference, however, is not in the filling, but in the fact that thinner dough sheets are used, which are then filled with filling without much fat and rolled in long, relatively narrow rolls. In Bosnia, identical dough dishes are also prepared with other fillings, which are known as pita .
Such a dish is called savijača (rolled) in Serbia , but where it is made less often than pita , which in Serbia is much wider and richer. Pita is crispier as the pastry sheets are even thinner.
After the Second World War, Burek in particular (in the first sense) became known and extremely popular in other parts of Yugoslavia ( Croatia , Slovenia ). The Bosnian pitas found their way a little later.
In Albania and Kosovo , burek is one of the traditional dishes and is especially prepared there in its meat-containing form, although in the Albanian-speaking part no distinction is made with pita in terms of the exact type of dough and filling.
Ambiguity of the term
The round burek is traditionally prepared in Belgrade . After the wars in Yugoslavia , refugees opened the so-called buregdžinice , where traditionally Bosnian burek is sold in Bosnia , although it was rarely found in Belgrade. But the situation was confusing. For some time both dishes were called burek. It was only shortly before 2005 that the name bosanske pite (Bosnian pitas ) became a name for the Bosnian burek, sirnica (with cheese, Serbo-Croatian "sir") or Krompiruša (also "krumpiruša" from Serbo-Croatian "krompir" / "krumpir", dt. "Potato") naturalized.
In Bosnia, the name Burek is used exclusively for the pita filled with minced meat. As long as it is a preparation with Jufka dough, the specific type of preparation (rolled, layered, etc.) is irrelevant.
In the Bosnian cultural area, this dish is generally referred to as pita and, unlike in most neighboring countries, not as burek . Since the variations of pitas are more diverse in Bosnia and are also prepared more frequently, they usually have proper names (“Zeljanica”, “Tikvenica”, “Kupusnjača” ...).
