Baursak

Ingredients

• Flour600 g
• Milk — warm300 ml
• Dry yeast7 g
• Egg2
• Sugar2 tbsp
• Butter — melted50 g
• Oil for frying1 l
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm milk and leave it ten minutes, until it foams.

   12 min

2. 2

   Work in the eggs, melted butter, salt and flour to a soft dough. It should stay slightly tacky.

   12 min

3. 3

   Cover and leave somewhere warm for an hour, until the dough has doubled.

   60 min

4. 4

   Knock it back, roll it out a centimetre and a half thick and cut it into three-centimetre squares or diamonds.

   12 min

5. 5

   Let the pieces stand under a cloth for twenty minutes; this second rise is the reason for the hollow.

   20 min

6. 6

   Heat the oil to 170 °C and fry in batches for two to three minutes, turning, to an even gold.

   20 min

7. 7

   Drain on paper and serve warm, with tea, soured cream or honey.

   3 min

About the dish

A proper baursak is hollow inside. The cavity comes from temperature rather than recipe: at around 170 °C the steam inflates the dough before the crust sets.

The dough is made with milk or katyk and must rise twice. One rise is enough for flavour but not for lightness.

Baursak are piled in a shared bowl. At a wake and at a celebration they are equally obligatory — the bread without which a Kazakh table is not considered laid.

Worth knowing

• — Fry a handful at a time. An overloaded pan loses temperature, and the baursak soak up oil instead of puffing.
• — Pieces of one size fry evenly. Mixed sizes have to be fished out one by one and some will burn.
• — The savoury version, without sugar, is served with meat instead of bread. The sweet one goes with tea.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

330 kcal

Protein

8 g

Fat

14 g

Carbs

44 g

More from Kazakhstan

• Beshbarmak — Boiled meat on sheets of pasta with an onion broth called sorpa. The centrepiece of a Kazakh table.