Pastry & pies
Tutmanik
A yeasted bread rolled around white cheese and eaten warm for breakfast; Prilep calls it kopishmide.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr 40 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Total
- 2 hr 15 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 12 ingredients
Method
- Stir the yeast and sugar into the warm milk and water with a spoonful of the flour and leave it for ten minutes, until it froths. If nothing happens the yeast is dead and there is no point going further.
- Mix the flour and salt, pour in the yeast liquid and the oil, and knead for ten minutes to a soft, smooth dough. Cover it and leave it somewhere warm for about an hour, until it has doubled.
- Beat one of the eggs into the yoghurt and fold in the crumbled cheese. Leave it lumpy — a smooth paste disappears into the bread.
- Knock the dough back and divide it into six pieces. Roll each one out to the thickness of a coin.
- Spread each sheet with softened butter and a sixth of the cheese, roll it into a rope and wind the rope into a snail.
- Set the coils in a buttered round tin, close together but not touching, cover them and leave them to rise for half an hour.
- Beat the second egg and brush it over the tops, then scatter over the nigella seeds.
- Bake at 180°C for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until the coils are deep gold and have joined into one loaf.
- Pull it apart by hand while it is still warm and eat it with yoghurt or a glass of ayran.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Sirenje (Macedonian white brined cheese)
- Bulgarian or Greek feta, rinsed and drained; if it is very salty, cut it with 100 g of ricotta
- Thick sheep's-milk yoghurt
- full-fat Greek yoghurt strained for an hour — thin set yoghurt makes the filling run out of the coils
- Nigella seeds (чурекот)
- sesame seeds, or a mixture of sesame and poppy
