How to Make 3 Kinds of Bosnian Pita

The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CCHAP) is the state’s folk and traditional arts initiative, with the mission of documenting, presenting, and sustaining traditional artists and their communities. Living traditional practices are also known as folklife—the everyday, extraordinary creativity that people share with one another.

Beginning in March 2020, CCHAP reached out to cultural heritage artists around the state to ask if they would be willing to create videos showing their many different art forms to a broader audience—something to connect their homes to ours, something that they wanted to share with their cultural communities, too.

Cultural heritage arts are alive and deeply meaningful. They take skill and dedication. They contribute to the well-being of people and their communities. They create a sense of home. Get to know Connecticut folklife, at home and with you.

In this video, Fikreta Muratovic demonstrates how she makes three kinds of Bosnian pita, crispy multilayered pastries filled with cheese (Sirnica), potato (Krompiruša), and meat (Burek). Fikreta makes this tricky recipe seem easy, carefully stretching phyllo-like dough into a translucent wrapper for the different fillings. Family members Fatima Vejzovic and Amar Muratovic help out in the cooking and filming--three generations at work together in their kitchen.

TIME STAMPS
00:15 How to make dough
1:00 How to make cheese filling
2:09 Meat filling
2:45 Potato filling
3:44 How to roll out dough
4:54 Filling potato pita
5:58 Arranging potato pita in pan
6:35 Filling cheese pita
7:56 Arranging cheese pita in pan
9:23 Filling meat pita
11:53 Arranging meat pita
14:54 Baking instructions
15:04 Potato pita additional instructions (boiling water and butter)

INGREDIENTS
Dough
1/2 Liter water
3/4 kg flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 oz oil
extra flour for dusting

Cheese (Sirnica) Pita
About 36 oz. cottage cheese
salt per preference
1 egg
1 oz oil

Potato (Krompiruša) Pita
1/2 kg of finely diced potatoes
2 oz oil
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)
Vegeta seasoning (to taste)
addition of boiling water, salt, and butter (after pita is golden brown)

Meat (Burek) Pita
1 pound minced meat (here, beef)
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)
1 head of finely diced yellow onion
Vegeta seasoning (to taste)
garlic powder optional

Bake at 450 F for about 15 minutes (longer for potato pita)

EQUIPMENT
Large tea towel
Rolling pin
Parchment paper

To learn more about CCHAP, visit: https://chs.org/cchap

This video series is made possible with support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts/DECD, and the National Endowment for the Arts.