Börek (Turkish: ), also referred to as burek or byrek or burekas, is a family of pastries or pies made in West Asia and Southeast Europe. The pastry is made of a thin flaky dough such as filo with a variety of fillings, such as meat, cheese, spinach, or potatoes. A borek may be prepared in a large pan and cut into portions after baking, or as individual pastries. They are usually baked but some varieties can be fried. Borek is sometimes sprinkled with sesame or nigella seeds, and it can be served hot or cold.
Throughout Southeast Europe and in West Asia, it is commonly served with ayran, or yogurt. It is a custom of Sephardic Jews to have bourekas for their Shabbat breakfast meal on Saturday mornings.
Etymology The word börek, defined as "a stuffed pancake", is of Turkish origin and comes from the Turkish verb bürmek, meaning "to roll" or "to twist". The verb derives from Old Turkic bürük ("to gather"), and in turn from the verbal root bür- ("to cover", "to wrap", or "to gather").
The earliest mention of börek is by Mevlana, dating back to the 13th century. Kitâb al-Idrâk li-lisân al-Atrâk, a Kipchak-Turkic and Arabic dictionary compiled by Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati in the early 14th-century, defines börek as "pieces of dough stuffed with meat", and records şiş börek for a variety cooked onto a skewer.
Burek is used in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Hungary. Forms in other languages include: ; ; ; and ; and .
History The exact origin of börek is unclear, with many cultures claiming credit, while the general practice of layering thin breads and fillings has been perserved and independently invented by multiple different cultures.Mayer, Caroline E. "Phyllo Facts". Washington Post. 1989. Archived.
One theory posits that the dish in general is a descendant of the pre-existing Eastern Roman (Byzantine) dish en tyritas plakountas (Byzantine Greek: ) "cheesy placenta", itself a descendant of placenta, the classical baked layered dough dish of Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman and Byzantine cuisine.Speros Vryonis The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, 1971, p. 482 Antiphanes (4th century BC), a contemporary of Archestratos, provided an ornate description of plakous with wheat flour and goat's cheese as key ingredients:The streams of the tawny bee, mixed with the curdled river of bleating she-goats, placed upon a flat receptacle of the virgin daughter of Demeter [honey, cheese, flour], delighting in ten thousand delicate toppings – or shall I simply say plakous? I'm for plakous' (Antiphanes quoted by Athenaeus).Later, in 160 BC, Cato the Elder provided a recipe for placenta in his De agri cultura which Andrew Dalby considers, along with Cato's other dessert recipes, to be in the "Greek tradition", and possibly copied from a Greek cookbook.Shape the placenta as follows: place a single row of tracta along the whole length of the base dough. This is then covered with the mixture [cheese and honey] from the mortar. Place another row of tracta on top and go on doing so until all the cheese and honey have been used up. Finish with a layer of tracta...place the placenta in the oven and put a preheated lid on top of it [...] When ready, honey is poured over the placenta.De agri cultura 76 (Cato the Elder, De Agri Cultura).Through its Byzantine Greek name plakountos, the dessert was adopted into Armenian cuisine as plagindi, plagunda, and pghagund (), „all cakes of bread and honey.". From the latter term came the later Arabic name iflaghun, which is mentioned in the medieval Arab cookbook Wusla ila al-habib as a specialty of the Cilician Armenians settled in southern Asia Minor and settled in the neighboring Crusader kingdoms of northern Syria. Thus, the dish may have traveled to the Levant in the Middle Ages via the Armenians, many of whom migrated there following the first appearance of the Turkish tribes in medieval Anatolia..
Another theory posits that börek also developed from the Turkic custom of preparing thin flatbread (yufka), which was often layered with butter or fillings between the layers, bordering on pastry. The origin of the paper-thin sheets of dough that are used to make börek, known as filo today, is also disputed, with some attributing the origin of filo to the Ancient Greeks; Homer's Odyssey, written around 800 BC, mentions thin breads sweetened with walnuts and honey. In the fifth century BC, Philoxenos states in his poem "Dinner" that, in the final drinking course of a meal, hosts would prepare and serve cheesecake made with milk and honey that was baked into a pie.Hoffman, Susanna. The Olive and the Caper. Workman Publishing Company, Inc. Desserts made with this prototype would include the placenta cake, which historian Speros Vryonis describes as a "Byzantine favorite" and "the same as baklava". While others attribute the invention of filo to the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace in Ottoman Istanbul.
The earliest record of the Turkish word börek appears in the 12th-century Turkish epic Danishmendnâme, where a sweet pastry called şeker böreği is mentioned. The 14th-century Chinese cookbook Yinshan Zhengyao, compiled by the Uyghur court dietician Hu Sihui who served the Chinese Emperor during the Yuan dynasty, contains one of the first recorded recipes for börek, where a related pastry called päräk is described as being filled with chopped mutton, sheep's fat, leeks, and spices, and baked using a flat iron with butter or honey basted on it when done. Its sweet version, called chäkärli päräk, is filled with ground walnuts, honey, and an unidentifiable roasted ingredient, cooked on the wall of a tandoor oven.
These recipes are connected to the tradition of layered breads prepared by the nomadic Turks from Central Asia during the medieval times, who “had an obsessive interest in making layered bread, possibly in emulation of the thick oven breads of city people”. This bread was known as yufka, which is also the modern Turkish term synonymous to the Greek word filo, while yufka is thicker and prepared differently than filo, which is used to make börek today. Originally, börek was cooked on a saj, the flat griddle of iron used for making yufka, which was replaced today by other cooking methods including frying or baking, although the Kalmyks, a Mongolic people, boil their deviant büreg.
The 11th-century Turkic dictionary Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk by Mahmud Kashgari records the term yuvgha, an archaic form of yufka, defining it as “pleated or folded bread”. The dictionary mentions the term several times, including a variety of folded yufka called yalaci yuvgha that is described as “so fragile that it crumbled at the touch”. In 1433, the French pilgrim Bertrandon de la Brocquière (1400–1459) encountered Turcoman nomads in the mountains of southern Turkey, who offered him yufka with yogurt, cheese, and grapes. The yufka was made so quickly that Brocquière declared, "They make two of their cakes sooner than a waferman can make one wafer." Other yufkas were served folded with fillings of minced meat and onions.
Another preparation of yufka recorded by Kashghari, katma yuvgha, was not only folded but also cooked in butter, a technique still employed in the preparation of börek. According to Alya Algar, most elements involved in the making of börek were already present in the 11th century given that rolling pins called oklava were common and that yufkas were diversified enough to be called by different names. She notes that most Turkic languages of Central Asia have words denoting rolled flat bread, quite often layered with butter, some including fillings and thus border on pastry.
Several of these ancient layered breads survive among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. In Uzbekistan, a cake known as yupga is made by frying a thin sheet of dough on both sides, layering minced meat and onions in it, covering the filling with a raw sheet of dough, turning it over to fry the raw side and then repeating the process to build up a cake that is 10 or more layers thick. A similar dish is made in Tatarstan called yoka, consisting of 10 to 12 thin sheets of dough that are fried, buttered, and stacked before being cut into wedges in pie-fashion and served with tea.
Yufkas may have evolved into a thinner dough more similar to modern filo after the Turks came in contact with the advanced cookery of Persian courts in the 10th century, who introduced an early form of puff pastry that involved laminating and buttering the dough, rolling it thin, and filling it with almonds. The rise of börek in West Asia is reflected in a poem by the 14th-century Persian poet Bushaq-i At’ima, and was even considered a rival to pilaf, describing an imaginary battle between borek and pilaf, which were personified as two rival monarchs. However, Gil Marks speculates that yufka evolved into a sophisticated, thin dough by the 15th century, at around the same time the modern börek was developing.
Others suggest that the Turkic dish buğra, a deep-fried filled dumpling credited to the ruler Bughra Khan, may have been one of the inspiriations of present-day börek due to their similarities in name and their commonness in the placing of filling in dough.
The dish was a popular element of Ottoman cuisine, and may have been present at the Ottoman court, though there are also indications it was made among Central Asian Turks.Perry, Charles. "The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava", in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (ed. Sami Zubaida, Richard Tapper), 1994, . While other earlier versions of the dish date to the Classical era of the Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean.
Regional variants
Burek is popular in the cuisines of the former Byzantine, and Ottoman Empire, especially in North Africa and throughout the Balkans. Borek is also part of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish traditions. They have been adopted by the Ottoman Jewish communities, and have been described, along with boyos de pan and bulemas as forming "the trio of preeminent Ottoman Jewish pastries".
Algeria
In Algeria, this dish is called bourek, a roll of pastry sheet stuffed with meat, onions, and spice, is one of the main appetizers of Algerian cuisine.
It is a starter served when receiving guests and especially during Ramadan evenings during the round meal of the holy month, usually accompanied by Algerian Chorba or Harira. Other forms include bourek packed with chicken and onions, shrimp and béchamel sauce, or a vegetarian alternative usually made of mashed potatoes and spinach.
Another Algerian variant of Bourek is called Brik or Brika, a specialty of Algeria's east, notably Annaba. It is a savory entree made from brik leaf, stuffed with mashed potatoes and a mixture of minced meat, onions, cheese and parsley. The whole is topped with a seasoned raw egg which cooks once the sheet of brik has been folded and soaked in boiling oil.
Armenia
In Armenia, (Armenian: ) or (Armenian: ) consists of dough, or filo dough, folded into triangles and stuffed with spinach, onions and Armenian cheeses or ground beef.
Panri borek (Armenian: պանրի բորեկ), or cheese borek, is the most widespread variant in Armenian homes and bakeries. It is typically filled with cheeses such as lori, chechil, or motal. The filling is often mixed with herbs like tarragon or parsley and encased in folded or rolled phyllo dough. In some regions, lavash is often used instead of phyllo. This variety is often served during breakfast, or at festive gatherings.
Msov borek (Armenian: մսով բորեկ, “meat borek”) is a savory pastry made with seasoned ground beef or lamb, often including onions. It is usually fried and served hot. In the diaspora, triangular fried versions are especially popular and often appear on meze platters during New Year's and Easter feasts.