Week 51 - Georgian

When I think of Georgian food, the dish that immediately comes to mind is khachapuri. We've never been to a Georgian restaurant to try it since we've often seen egg included in the middle of the boat with the cheese, but in researching dishes for this challenge, I learned that there are actually multiple variations of khachapuri! I guess it's just the general name for Georgian cheese-filled bread (learn something new every day). The one we're most familiar with (the cheese boat one) is adjaruli khachapuri, but I found another type - imeruli khachapuri - that, based on recipes, didn't have to include egg. I did check out a bunch of other dishes, but kept coming back to this. After all, khachapuri is Georgia's national dish, so a logical first choice to start our exploration of the country's cuisine.

I looked at three different sites to see how they made imeruli khachapuri (1, 2, 3), and from there, came up with an adaptation of it which I hoped would work. Having never eaten it before, I have no idea how close it is to the real thing. The ingredients I used were:

- 300g all-purpose flour

- 150g oat milk (lukewarm)

- water (added little by little)

- 6g instant yeast

- 6g salt

- 16 oz shredded mozzarella

- 2 flax eggs

- 2 tbsp melted butter

To make the dough, the flour, milk. and yeast were mixed together, with water added little by little, and then salt at the end. After kneading the dough for a while, I let it rest for about 2 hours. I was aiming for more but I got a little sidetracked by watching the Netherlands-Argentina World Cup match and started far later than I planned. Well, that and the time spent trying to figure out if our yeast was still alive. We bought it back during the bread-baking stage of the pandemic and froze it, taking it out a little at a time, but this batch was in the fridge for a while and I wasn't sure if it would work. (Thankfully it did, but that was another 10 minutes' delay.)

I was a little concerned when I pulled the dough out after it rested, because it did expand a little in size but nowhere near as much as I was expecting it to. I split it in two pieces, rolled them out, and then made the cheese mixture to go inside. This is where most people seemed to add eggs, so I added a couple of flax eggs to help bind the mixture together. I was going to do a mix of half mozzarella and half feta, since that seemed to be the recommendation if you couldn't get actual Georgian cheese, but our feta didn't smell so great anymore, leaving us with just mozzarella inside. We didn't have any other cheese at home besides shredded Mexican cheese or jalapeño goat cheese, so didn't have much choice.

Rolling out the dough with the cheese inside was easier than I thought it would be, although I did get some holes in the dough from overstuffing it. After the first one burst in two spots, I put less cheese in the second one, but the same thing happened again (but smaller holes). I baked them at 375 degrees for about 17 minutes, and then after they came out, brushed them with butter and let them sit on the pan for a bit longer while I cooked other things.

I didn't have high hopes for this after the dough not rising much, not having the feta cheese, and all the leaking cheese on the baking sheet, but we thought they came out really well! The dough had a good chew to it, and it was fluffier than I was expecting. The cheese tasted good, but it really was missing that saltiness and brininess from the feta.