Bougatsa ( ) is a Greek cuisine breakfast food (sweet or savoury), or mid-morning snack, or midday snack.
Origin
The name comes from the
Byzantine Greek πογάτσα (pogátsa), from the ancient Roman
pānis focācius, literally "hearth bread";
cf. Italian
focaccia.
It may have had a classical origin in the Ancient Greek/Roman
placenta cake. A similar dessert is still known as
placenta () on the island of
Lesbos in Greece.
is a type of pancake, made from two layers of dough, usually filled with cottage cheese. Sometimes chocolate or apples are used instead. The cake is covered with honey, before being baked.
It originated in Northern Greece, in particular the city of Serres and city of Thessaloniki.
The taste of bougatsa varies between regions of Greece. For example, bougatsa cream in Veria is very sweet and full of cream, while in Thessaloniki the bougatsa cream is crunchy and not that sweet, and in Chania the bougatsa cheese is made of local mizithra cheese (not sweet) but sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Similarly to Veria, the bougatsa cream in Athens is sweet and full of cream.
Bougatsa is also a popular breakfast dish among Jews.
Preparation
Traditional Greek bougatsa is prepared from hand-made
phyllo dough wrapped around a filling. After it is baked about 30–35 minutes in the oven, it is cut into small pieces and served hot on a small plate. The
bougatsa cream is filled with
semolina custard; it is then cut into small pieces and served hot, topped with lightly dusted powdered icing sugar and/or
cinnamon.
The bougatsa recipe parts are: preparing the custard filling; placing about 5 sheets of buttered phyllo pastry (also known as filo) in a baking dish; assembling the bougatsa; preheating the oven to the correct temperature and baking until the phyllo dough reaches the desired golden-brown crispness; cutting the bougatsa while still hot into small portions and serving.
Most modern bougatsa is made with machine-made phyllo, but some cafes and bakeries selling hand-made bougatsa still exist, especially in smaller towns and villages of Greece.
There are several bougatsa food versions which have their own filling, with the most known being:
In popular culture
The process of making bougatsa by hand-made filo was featured on an episode of
filmed in Chania, Crete.
See also
