Pide with Eggplant and Feta Filling

It was time again to refresh my sourdough starter and at the same time I wished a warm dinner.

A few weeks ago I prepared pizza and now I thought that pide would be the perfect dinner for today.

Pides is a flat bread dish filled and made into a boat shaped before baking. It originated in Turkey and now very popular around the world. The pide can be filled with choice of meat or vegetables, however filling of minced meat is very common, the other choices could be bell peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, chili etc.

Cheese fillings are often combined with spinach. In my case I had a big eggplant in the fridge as well as some red peppers. This was my inspiration.

I collected what I had at home and made a beautiful basket of veggies. I was blessed that the cold weather and the snow did not destroy my mint growing in the garden, surprisingly as it would be spring the mint was green with a lot of green leaves. This is the first year that I keep mint directly in the garden as it can spread everywhere in a short time.

I will give you the recipe of the dough I made with my sourdough starter and how to prepare it with yeast. The other possibility is buying pizza dough!

• Servings: 3-6
• Time: 3 hrs
• Difficulty: medium
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Autor: https://artandkitchen.wordpress.com 

You need:

Dough:

• 100 g sourdough starter (or 45 g flour + 5 g instant yeast + 50 ml water)
• 120 ml water
• 250 g flour
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Additional flour for the working surface

Filling:

• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 big onion, roughly chopped
• 1 big eggplant, peeled and diced into 1 cm pieces
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 2 Roma tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin ground, to taste
• Pepper, to taste
• 100 g cream cheese (optional)
• 200 g feta cheese, crumbled
• 2 tablespoons chopped mint

Procedure:

1. Combine all the ingredients for the dough and knead on a floured working surface for about 10 minutes. Add more flour if necessary.
2. Let rise until doubled for more or less two hours. The time depends form the temperature and from the sourdough starter or yeast kind.
3. In the meantime heat 2 tablespoon of oil and fry the chopped onion for 5 minutes until golden. Set aside.
4. Heat 2 tablespoons and fry eggplant and pepper.
5. Reduce heat, add fried onions, tomatoes, salt, pepper and cumin. Stir well, cover and let cook for about 10 minutes until eggplants are soft. Check spices and salt and adjust.
6. Take the dough and form 6 balls. Coat with oil and let rest for about 30 minutes.
7. Roll out and fill the pide to ovals (more or less 30 cm by 15 cm) one by one. Best roll out on a floured working surface and place on the baking try. Fill directly on the tray I placed 2 pide on each tray.
8. For filling: Place 1/6 of the vegetable filling down the center of the dough leaving 3 cm free. Top each pide with 2-3 cream cheese filling, add mint and finish with feta.
9. Now fold the long side of the dough border over the filling. Use your fingers to pinch the dough together at the end.
10. For soft pides cover trays loosely with a clean tea towel and set aside for 30 minutes to prove. If you prefer crispy ones skip the bake immediately.
11. Preheat the oven to 250°C for crispy pides and 180°C for soft ones.
12. Bake for about 15 minutes at 250°C or 20-25 minutes at 180°C until the crumbled feta begins to get brown borders and the bottom of the pide is well done.