The name of this wonderful Russian open pie with cottage cheese comes from the word “vatra”, which meant “hearth”. In the old days, grandmothers made cheesecakes not only with cottage cheese, but also with jam, jam or jam. Pieces of fruit or grated bird cherry were added to the curd filling.
Cheesecakes with cottage cheese
To prepare the dough, take: – 0,5 liters of milk; – 25 g of yeast; – 1 tbsp. l. Sahara; – 1 tsp salt; – 100 g margarine; – 1 kg of wheat or rye flour.
Cheesecake dough like grandmother’s can be made in two ways: sponge and unpaired. For the first, you must first prepare the dough. To do this, grind the yeast (if you purchased wet baking) or, if you have active dry ones (although our grandmothers did not use them), mix with sugar. Add warm liquid, water or milk, add half of the flour, stir. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and let the dough come up until the mass has increased 1,5-2 times.
Sift the flour through a sieve before kneading the dough. This will loosen it up, and the dough will turn out much more fluffy.
Then add sugar, salt, remaining flour and softened margarine to the dough. Knead until the dough is elastic, smooth and shiny. A well-kneaded dough should come loose from your hands. Place it in a warm place so that it rises again. During this time, it must be crushed two or three times (the more the dough is crumpled, the more magnificent the cheesecakes will be).
The safe method of making cheesecake dough is the simplest and fastest. Dissolve yeast with a little warm milk and sugar. Then add the rest of the milk and flour and knead until the dough sticks to your palms. Dust the mixture with flour and leave to rise.
The dough for cheesecakes can be bland, but they will not turn out as fluffy as from yeast, and they are stored much less.
Tear off pieces the size of a tennis ball from the dough. Place them on a floured table and leave to rise. Then transfer to a baking sheet, greased with vegetable oil or margarine, make cakes. Press the bottom of the glass in the middle of the workpiece. Put a tablespoon of curd filling in the resulting hole. Let the cheesecakes rise again. To make the cheesecakes brown, brush the dough with whipped yolk.
Egg yolks give the baked cheesecakes an appetizing look and characteristic shine. Lubricating the dough with them, try to do it evenly and make sure that the yolks do not run down on the baking sheet, otherwise everything will burn
Place the cheesecakes in the oven to bake. Determine readiness as follows: stick a wooden toothpick into the dough. If the raw dough has not adhered to the surface, the products are ready.