BODENIK - BODEN DEDO - TRADITIONAL MACEDONIAN PIE

This is a recipe sent by Macedonian Cuisine's friends Snezana and Arsen Arsovi from Shtip who made this beautiful old traditional Macedonian pie and shared the recipe with us. I'm sure that many of you have already heard about "boden dedo" but haven't got a chance to find the recipe and prepare it. The basic recipe is only with cheese, this is a richer version that is prepared in Shtip where they put pork meat from top. Enjoy!
 Ingredients:
  • 500-600 g flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 cube fresh yeast (40 g)
  • 2-3 tbs oil
  • about 300 ml warm water (as needed)
  • melted butter or margarine for coating the crusts 
  • about 200 g crushed feta cheese
  • about 300 g pork meat pieces previously coated with salt, black pepper, paprika and oil

Preparation:
  1. Dissolve yeast in 250 ml warm water and 1 tsp sugar. Then gradually add flour, add salt, a little oil, use about 500-600 g of flour and about 300 ml of water to knead a soft non stick dough.
  2. Divide dough in 6 balls.
  3. Stretch each ball in a crust size as the baking pan you'll use (size 30-32).
  4. Coat each crust with a melted butter or margarine when arranging in the pan. Coat the baking pan too.
  5. Put one crust in the baking pan, add crushed cheese and repeat the procedure with the other 4 crusts. You don't add cheese and butter on the 6th crust.
  6. Cut pie in squares and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour.
  7. Then put a piece of meat from top on every piece, press a little, add melted butter or margarine and put to bake in a preheated oven at 200 C degrees the first 15 minutes, then lower the temperature at 180 C until both the pie and the meat are well baked.