Georgian shoti bread is a delicious pastry usually served straight out of the oven. An unusual dish that came to us from Georgia is safe, since some recipes do not even contain yeast. Refers to lean.
Shotis is so named due to its oblong shape, reminiscent of a saber. If a person has baked an ordinary flattened cake, then it is simply called "dedis puri (mother's)."
Such bread is very common in its homeland - in Georgia. Here you can buy it in almost any bakery.
There is usually a small hole in the middle of Georgian puri bread. But this is not just a tribute to tradition, as opposed to form. If there is no hole, then air will appear inside the bread. It will begin to rise and over time will turn into a large inflated bubble.
The recipe is quite simple. It does not require any secrets, special skill. It will take 15 minutes to cook and about 2 hours to bake.
Tip: “A special stone oven will come in handy. Electric is also suitable, but only in the traditional form. You need a special press and a kneading machine when it comes to a large number of portions. "
First, you need to slightly warm up the water for the dough. It is better to use either the peeled or the drinking option. Add yeast, as well as flour and the required amount of salt.
Knead the resulting dough until you get an approximately homogeneous mass, and leave to come up. The future bread should stand for at least one and a half hours to get a soft and tasty dough. At home, it is better to wrap the dough with foil and put it in a warm and dark place.
After that, divide the base into several even parts, as can be seen in the photo, and wrap them with foil again. In order for the dough to be baked, it must be left for another 15-20 minutes.
To make bread, which is called Georgian bread, it is necessary to give the base an oblong shape with sharp edges. In the center, you need to make a small depression so that when baking, the cake can keep its shape.
Carefully transfer the baked goods to a special press, being careful not to accidentally break the thin center. Anoint it with a solution of water and salt, which has already stood for a while.
8 minutes is enough for cooking the product at home. A sign of readiness is the appearance of a crispy golden crust on the surface. After that, the baked goods will gradually fall off the walls. It is important not to miss such a moment so that the cake does not fall on the coals and burn out.
You can get a treat out of the fire only with the help of special tools so as not to burn yourself. For this, special blades are used in Georgia. It is also permissible to use tongs at home.
The dish is ready!
There are only 229 kilocalories in 100 grams of Georgian bread. Due to such a low value, the delicacy is popular with people who watch their figures. You can also eat pastries during fasting.
The same portion contains:
The glycemic index is quite low, there are not too many fast carbohydrates. The fat content is lowered. As a result, Georgian bread is not only lean, but also healthy.
Bread is also baked in a conventional oven. A stone oven is not necessary - a simple baking sheet will do. In this case, put a few clean, preheated clay bricks in the stove. They need to be disinfected in some way. Later, the dough is already hung on them.
The press is made by hand. For her, take a simple wooden board. A sponge, cotton wool or other heat-resistant material is placed on top. After that, the device is covered with a dense dark matter.
Tip: “If during the cooking process the base starts to fall off constantly (until a golden crust appears), mistakes were made during the cooking process. Better to remove the cakes and make the dough again for them. "
There is an original way of filing. Before the puri is placed on the table, it must be cut in half while it is still hot. After that, put a few sprigs of fresh cilantro and suluguni inside. Wait for the cheese to melt slightly from the high temperatures. Ordinary tarragon is used as a delicious drink that can set off shoti.
Another option is to eat tortillas with barbecue. When the meat is ready, it is necessary to remove the juicy pieces from the skewer with the help of bread, as if wrapping a treat with it. In this case, the pulp is well saturated with marinade and juice. You will get completely original pastries.
Shotis puri is special among all types. If "mother's bread" is usually served at home, then saber-shaped - for the celebration. It is often served with other traditional dishes, including soups.
If the dish has already been cooked, but serve it only after half an hour, put the puri on a baking sheet and cover with a warm towel. This will keep the treats warm for a long time.
Once upon a time in Georgia, they were scrupulous about all products. If there were surpluses left from the previous baking of Georgian bread, they were not thrown away, but left in a tempo place for several days.
Mostly, ordinary hop yeast was used for cooking. But since it was not so easy to get them, in ordinary houses they made bread with strong home-brewed beer.
Such a delicacy was baked no more than once a week. On this occasion, the whole family gathered at the table. The best wine was obtained, meat was prepared. A large number of spices, herbs and other delicacies were used.
These are delicious pastries that go well with other dishes. The crispy bread will be enjoyed by all family members.
Georgia is one of the few countries where bread is baked in the old folk way - in ovens.
Georgian bread is often confused with Armenian and is called lavash. Wrong. Lavash is Armenian bread (thin), and puri tonis is Georgian ( This is a fluffy flatbread that is eaten hot)... Translated means. - "puri" - bread, "tonis" - from the tone stove
Tonis puri is made according to ancient technology and its recipe is passed down from generation to generation.
Georgian bread is very diverse. I will list the most popular types:
Mrgvili (round)
shoti (sickle)
dedas-puri (long)
puri (bread with kvass)
The recipe for this bread is simple - water - flour and salt. An interesting technology for baking bread ... Look at the tone and you will see that the cakes are literally stuck to the wall. The question is: why don't they fall off?
The secret is that the oven has a certain temperature, or rather 300 degrees (it is at this temperature that the bread will not fall).
It also depends on whether the dough is good.
If a baker sticks dough pieces to the hot walls of the oven and some suddenly falls off, it means that the dough is bad, and the further work of the baker will be in question.
How to prepare classic shotis puri step by step:
If you add a little cheese to the shotis puri, the bread will turn out to be even more fragrant and tender. The main secret of this pastry is that the cheese must be added twice. Directly into the dough itself and sprinkle on top when the cake is almost ready. In this case, you can use any kind of hard cheese. Shotis puri flatbread already has its own special taste, and cheese melting in your mouth will give it a peculiar flavor. Add some Provencal herbs to Georgian shotis puri with cheese.
Ingredients:
Step by step preparation of cheese shotis puri:
Your shoti will turn out to be just as tasty and even more satisfying when you add bacon bits to it. For the preparation of such bread, it is better to use already cut into thin slices. It is better to use thinly sliced bacon in order to give the bread a light smoky flavor and at the same time not kill all the taste of the bread.
Ingredients:
How to prepare bacon shotis puri step by step:
It's important to know! 5 minutes before cooking, you can put bacon cubes and herbs inside the tortilla.
This recipe differs from the others in that it will take a minimum of time to prepare it. Thanks to the additional ingredients, the shoti is even more aromatic and softer. Due to the fact that, in addition to the main ingredients, additional ones are added to the dough, such a cake will remain soft and airy longer. It is best served with hot main courses.
Ingredients:
Step-by-step cooking of shotis puri with baking:
You don't need to use yeast to make Shotis Puri. They can be replaced with natural sourdough, which can also be prepared at home. This will take a lot of time, it will wander for about a week. If you did not have time to prepare it in advance, then you can buy a ready-made one.
As you know, yeast is added to bread so that the dough comes up faster. Yeast-free Shotis Puri is more beneficial. Thanks to the natural starter culture, which is added instead of yeast, lactic acid bacteria are produced. Such bread retains the maximum amount of nutrients.
Ingredients:
Step-by-step preparation of yeast-free bread shotis puri:
Traditional Georgian bread is an integral part of any meal. Bread in Georgian is "puri", and it is baked in special clay ovens - "tone", heated to 400 degrees. The dough pieces are glued directly to the walls of the "tone" and baked very quickly.
Georgian bread comes in various shapes: round, oblong, with rounded corners - "dedis puri" (mother's bread), and "shotis puri" - diamond-shaped, with elongated tips.
Today I want to tell you how to make diamond-shaped Georgian bread in the form of a "shotis-puri" saber at home. According to experts, the shape of such bread did not appear by chance - it was convenient to take it on military campaigns. Therefore, it is also called the bread of the warriors. It is easy to bake and cools down very quickly.
To make Georgian shoti bread (shotis puri), you need a simple set of ingredients: water, yeast, salt and flour. Since home ovens cannot be heated to 400 degrees, we will bake bread at 250 degrees. Of course, we will not get the result, as in a special "tone" oven, but we will try to get an approximate version.
Homemade shotis puri is delicious. It has a crispy crust and a very soft, porous crumb.
To prepare Georgian bread, prepare the necessary products.
Pour yeast into warm water, stir and leave for 5-10 minutes to "start".
Knead the dough. The main thing is that it does not turn out too steep, so it is better to add flour in parts. The dough should be soft and tender, but at the same time completely lag behind the hands. Gather the dough into a ball and put in a bowl, tighten the bowl with cling film and leave warm for 1.5-2 hours.
After the expiration of time, the dough will grow well and increase in volume.
Divide the dough in two. Roll a bun out of each piece of dough, cover with a towel and leave for another 15 minutes.
After that, give the blanks a more elongated look (as in the photo).
Then stretch the elongated loaf a little wide to form a rhombus. Make a hole in the center through which air will escape. Leave the blanks for proofing for another 20 minutes, cover with a towel.
Bake Georgian bread in a well-heated oven at a temperature of 240-250 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.
Remove the finished cakes from the oven and wrap them in a towel.
Homemade Georgian bread shoti (shotis puri) turns out to be very tasty. It can be served hot or chilled.
The crust of this bread is crispy, and the crumb is porous and soft.
Bon Appetit!
Bread is “puri” in Georgian, and the oven is “tone”, so the locals call the bread from the oven “tonis puri”. Georgians bake different types of bread, each district has its own mini-bakery. It comes in different shapes: round, oblong, with rounded edges - "dedis puri" (mother's bread), and "shotis puri" - diamond-shaped, with elongated corners, in the form of a saber.
What is included in the "shoti"?
The recipe for traditional Georgian flatbreads, Shotis Puri, is very simple. The composition is the same as for regular white bread: flour, water, salt and a little yeast (in authentic recipes, yeast is often replaced by "biga" or "ripe" dough). But despite the simple ingredients, the taste of shoti is different from the usual pita bread. The crumb is porous, regular structure, crispy and salty crust.
Of course, baking in a home oven will not give the same result as a Georgian tone oven. The temperature is lower here and there is no campfire aroma. But still, at home, you can get an approximate version of Georgian bread, albeit not exactly the same, but still tasty.
What to serve with?
Shotis puri is crispy on top and with a porous crumb, it is very good with kebabs and almost any Georgian dishes: kharcho, satsivi, chanakhi. It goes well with cheeses. It is a special pleasure to cut the steaming bread, put a piece of suluguni and a couple of cilantro sprigs inside.
Can be served with barbecue. Put a whole cake on a large dish, remove the prepared meat from the skewer on top, cover with another shot so that it does not cool down. Serve like this to the table. As a result, the kebab remains hot, and the bread crumb is soaked in juices from the meat, delicious!
Total cooking time: 3 hours
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: 3 cakes
Knead the dough. To do this, pour warm water into a deep bowl, dilute dry yeast and salt in it. Do not be confused by the amount of salt, the dough should turn out to be very salty, then the taste of the bread will be pronounced, very pleasant. Next, pour the sifted flour into a bowl. We knead the dough with our hands - it should be thick, but in no case clogged with flour (you can add flour over the norm, but do not overdo it, otherwise the bread will be tough). Knead the dough well, stretching and collecting for about 10 minutes. You can entrust the process to a bread maker or work by hand.
Cover the bowl with the dough with a clean towel and leave in a warm place for 2 hours. During this time, the gluten will swell, and the dough bun will approximately double in size.
We divide the dough into 3 parts (it can be divided into 2 parts, then the crumb will be higher and more luxuriant, and then both blanks will fall on a baking sheet at once; but personally I like it when there are a lot of crust, but there is little crumb, so I divide by 3 cakes), form the balls and leave for another 15 minutes, covering with a towel.
We form shotis puri - we stretch the blanks with our hands to get elongated loaves. Then we stretch it a little wide to form a rhombus.
The palm should fit in the center. We put our palm and pull to the sides, thus forming a rhombus with pointed edges.
We roll up a little from both ends to get a kind of boat. Slightly flatten the middle with your palm and pinch off a piece of dough in the center. Air will escape through the hole. Without it, the cakes will expand and turn into round rolls from the hot air accumulated inside.
Put on a baking sheet sprinkled with flour. I like to bake Georgian bread on a baking sheet turned upside down - this way the sides do not interfere (I have 2 pieces on the baking sheet at a time). Leave for 20 minutes for proofing.
At the time of baking, the oven should already be preheated to a maximum of 240-250 degrees, you can turn on the grill. We send the blanks to a hot oven and bake for 10-15 minutes. If your oven bakes unevenly, then open the door about in the middle, unfold the baking sheet if necessary and add steam - with water from a spray bottle (I sprinkled it right on top of the baking sheet and bread, even if water gets on it). Steam will prevent the bread from drying out too much. The bread can be crusty on top or it can only be baked from the bottom and remain completely white on top, it all depends on the capabilities of your oven.
Take out the finished cakes and cover with a towel. Serve hot or cold. Keep in mind that they dry quickly, like pita bread, so it makes sense to store in a bag.