Fried bread with feta cheese

I have to admit, there are many, many cuisines out there that I have no knowledge about, one of them being Romanian. One way to educate myself is to do research and test out some of the recipes. Today's fried dough with feta cheese is a Romanian recipe, also known as Langosi cu branza.

Fried bread with feta cheese (Langosi cu Branza)

Recipe from jocooks.com

Cooking time: 55 minutes

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cup warm water

1 package active dry yeast (1/4 ounce)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 cups feta cheese, crumbled

vegetable oil for frying

Directions

1. Activate the yeast with the warm water (110-115 degrees F) and sugar. Let stand for 10 minutes or until the yeast gets bubbly.
2. In your mixing bowl, add the flour and salt. Add the yeast mixture and mix for 5 minutes using the dough hook. The dough will be sticky and elastic.
3. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough. Cover and rise for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size. 
4. Preheat frying oil to 350 degrees. 
5. Portion the dough into 8 pieces. Lightly oil your hands and roll each piece into a 4 inch circle. Add 1/4 cup feta cheese in the center and bring up the edges of the dough to form a dome or ball. Roll out the ball once again to a 6 inch circle. 
6. Carefully fry one dough at a time in the heated oil until golden on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. Repeat with remaining dough. Serve. 

Nutritional Analysis:
per serving: 451 calories, 22.2g fat (7.4g saturated, 7.2g polyunsaturated, 6.4g monounsaturated), 50g carbohydrates, 1.9g fiber, 12g protein

**Helpful tips and common mistakes

The dough for this recipe is quite sticky but do not be tempted to add more flour! Usually when activating the yeast, I find that 10 minutes is plenty of time, instead of 15 minutes. Make sure the temperature of the water is somewhere between 100 to 110 degrees F. 

I let my dough rise for 1 hour and found that it already had doubled in size. The amount of time it takes for the dough to rise depends on how warm your kitchen is. I use my dehydrator as a proofer by setting the temperature to 90 degrees F. 

The dough was sticky but not enough so that I needed to oil my hands. It was very easy to form into the desired shapes as it was elastic. 

I didn't have feta cheese on hand but I did have goat so I decided to use crumbled goat cheese instead. 1/4 cup of cheese may seem like a lot but the dough is quite large. Pull up the edges of the dough once you have stuffed it with cheese and form into a ball. Roll out once more and it's ready to fry!

I shallow-fried the dough but I really should have deep-fried them (this explains why the entire dough in my pictures is not golden; there are some lighter spots here and there). The difference between the two frying techniques is that shallow-frying only uses enough oil to fry one half of the dough at a time, while deep-frying completely immerses the dough in the oil. 

You can see the dough puffing up nicely on the top.

This dough is best served warm (although it's still tasty when room-temperature). I tried to sample only a bite, but I ended up eating the entire dough because it was so tasty. The outside is crispy while the inside is soft and the bits of cheese throughout the dough...delicious! Time to try more Romanian goods!