Bougatsa

Bougatsa is arguably the most famous pastry of Thessaloniki. It’s typically a crispy concoction of paper-thin filo and a creamy, silky-sweet filling. This recipe is adapted from one of the city’s most famous bougatsa places, Bandis, whose family has been making it for generations. Bandis’s bougatsa is made with the family’s secret recipe, so this version is reconstructed from what we saw when we visited.

Bougatsa. Credit: My Greek Table

• serves

  8

• prep

  25 minutes

• cook

  30 minutes

• difficulty

  Mid

Ingredients

Pastry

• 4 cups (500 g) plain (all-purpose) flour
• Pinch of salt
• 50 g (½ cup) butter, melted and kept at room temperature
• 250 g water, lukewarm
• 300 g (1¼ cups) butter, melted, to brush over the pastry

Cream filling

• 2 cups (500 ml) full-fat milk
• ¾ cup (150 g) sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ cup (50 g) cornstarch
• 4 egg yolks
• 20 g (1½ tbsp) butter, melted, kept at room temperature

For serving

• Icing (confectioner’s) sugar
• Cinnamon

Dough resting time: 50 minutes total.

Instructions

1. Add flour, salt, water and 50g butter to a mixer or food processor and start mixing until you form a flexible dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.
2. Butter a baking tray with three tablespoons of butter (out of the 300g). Divide the rested dough into four pieces and move them into the baking tray. Drizzle 3 teaspoons of butter on the surface of each piece of dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let them rest for 30 more minutes.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the custard filling by cooking milk with half of the sugar in medium heat until it simmers. When sugar is fully incorporated in the milk, switch off the heat.
4. In a bowl, whisk together the remaining sugar, vanilla, eggs and cornstarch until creamy and thick. Slowly add ladlefuls of the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture while whisking vigorously, so it doesn’t curdle.
5. When the cream thickens, whisk in the butter. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it cool.
6. Butter a clean, smooth work surface well, place one of the buttered and oiled pieces of dough and start spreading it with a rolling pin. Keep spreading the dough until it’s super thin and keep adding melted butter so that your dough doesn’t break. Make two pastry sheets out of every piece of dough. The sheets should be larger than your baking tray.
7. Using a pastry brush, butter the bottom and the sides of a baking tray. Layer four sheets one by one on the bottom of the tray, buttering each layer thoroughly. Tip in the cream filling and smooth the surface with a spatula.
8. Layer four more sheets of filo (phyllo) on top of the cream, buttering each as always on every sheet. Trim the excess filo pastry with a knife and roll the rest of the edges inwards with your hands. Brush the top with plenty of butter and score the top in portion-size pieces.
9. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F), for about 30-40 minutes, until the filo is gold and crisp. Let it cool off before cutting. Sprinkle with cinnamon and icing sugar and serve.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.