Homemade Puff Pastry Ricotta Cheese Spinach and Sweet Potatoes Burekas
This Ricotta Cheese Spinach and Sweet Potatoes Burekas recipe is made of quick home-made puff pastry, which I actually shared before. The video explaining the technique can be found here.
I always prefer using this technique and dough, every time I feel like having fresh puff pastry, but without the hassle of folding a butter block into the dough.
The result is quite similar to puff pastry made the traditional way, but will half the effort.
This time I also included sweet potatoes as part of the filling, but I think this burekas will taste great even without them.
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Homemade Puff Pastry Ricotta Cheese, Spinach and Sweet Potatoes Burekas
Equipment: No special equipment is needed.
Recipe: Makes 14 Medium sized burekas
Home-made puff pastry dough (or 660g storebought puff pastry, divided to 2 units, 330g each):
Ingredient | Amount (g / units) |
All Purpose Flour | 330g |
Salt | 7g |
Cold, Cubed Unsalted Butter | 200g |
Cold Water | 120g |
Cheese Filling:
Ingredient | Amount (g / units) |
Ricotta Cheese | 250g |
Grated Mozzarella Cheese | 70g |
Minced Garlic | 1 tsp |
Spinach, Finely Chopped | 70g |
Eggs | 50g |
Salt | 6g |
Pepper | 1/4 tsp |
Cooked Sweet Potatoes, Mashed to a puree | 200g (to the hot puree I’ve added some dried thyme, salt, and 1 tbsp of butter) |
Egg Wash:
One beaten egg, with little bit of water and a little bit of salt.
Preparation instructions:
For the dough:
Note: When making puff pastry at home, it is highly recommended to work in a cold environment. It is less of a problem during winter, but on summer days you may want to turn on you’re A/C, otherwise the butter will start melting really quickly, which would require refrigerating the dough between the folding.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix together the flour and salt.
- Add in the butter, and using your fingertips, incorporate it into the flour (see video demonstration). The goal is to flatten the butter between the fingers, and coat it with the flour, until it shrinks to medium sized pieces. You can also use both hands to run the butter in the flour, but watch not to overheat the butter too much due to the heat of the hands, otherwise the butter would melt.
- Add in the entire amount of water, and mix it in until just roughly combined. The dough will not be smooth and that’s is normal and to be expected.
- Drop the dough to your counter and lightly combine it with your hands. Roll it as much as possible, to a rectangle. The size doesn’t matter, and at first it may seem like it’s not gonna get there, but the more folds you do, the smoother the dough becomes.
- Make the first fold by bringing the lower third of the dough towards the center, and fold the top third of the dough on top of it (see video demonstration).
- Using a bench scraper, clean your counter from leftover dough and butter that have sticked to it, and dust it with little bit of flour.
- Rotate the dough 90 degrees clockwise, and roll it again to a rectangle.
- Repeat steps 5 through 7, three more times- Four letter folds in total should be made. Note that it’s important to clean your counter to prevent the dough from sticking to it, as the butter melts while you are working.
It is also important to use as little flour as possible when dusting your counter, dough and rolling pin- too much flour would not lead to the desired result. - After all folds were made, divide the dough into 2 units, about 330g each, and wrap them separately with plastic wrap. Refrigerate it for 30 minutes, to allow the dough to rest and to set the butter. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.
Cheese filling:
- Into a medium sized bowl, add all the ingredients for the filling and thoroughly mix them together.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and chop them into thick discs. Place in a small pot with boiling water to cover. Cook on low heat for 40 minutes until a fork is easily inserted into the sweet potato pieces. Puree the sweet potatoes and add seasoning to your preference.
Assembly and baking:
- Over a lightly floured counter, start rolling the dough. Note that if the dough is too cold, it will not roll easily. It will crack and break. Therefore, it is recommended to wait a few minutes, or hit the dough with a rolling pin to soften it.
- Roll each dough unit to a square sized 35cm (l) x 30cm (w).
- Evenly spread 220g of the cheese filling, using an offset spatula, on all of the dough.
- Evenly spread about 100g of the sweet potatoes puree on the bottom half of the dough, on top of the cheese filling.
- Roll the dough into a log, and freeze for 20 minutes.
- Using a serrated knife, in sawing motion, divide the log into 7 pieces, 5cm wide each, and arrange them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Refrigerate the pastries while the oven is pre-heating.
- Turn on your oven to 200C (fan mode ON), with a baking rack placed at the middle shelf inside the oven.
- Take the pastries out of the refrigerator, and brush them with the egg wash. Then sprinkle them with some sesame seeds.
- Bake for 30 minutes until the pastries have fully browned.
- Let the pastries cool down over a cooling rack, and wait about 15 minutes before serving.
Store at room temperature, inside an airtight container, 2-3 days. You can reheat these in the oven for about 5 minutes, 180C.