Plăcintă dobrogeană

Appearance & taste

The pie is round, in one piece and takes the shape of the baking tin; it weighs 500 to 2,000 g. The surface is even, slightly shiny and browned, but not dark; the fine crust is golden yellow with copper-coloured patches. Part-baked it is somewhat lighter, unbaked creamy white. When cut, yellowish-white cheese filling alternates with unrisen layers of dough, occasionally with air bubbles.

The yoghurt and egg glaze makes the texture soft and tender, not crisp as in similar pastries, and the air worked in during rolling makes it light rather than dense. The taste is salty, of baked cheese, curd cheese, eggs, yoghurt and dough. The filling makes up 55 to 70 %, and the salt content is 1.5 to 2 %.

Production

The ingredients are Telemea (a salted soft cheese), curd cheese, wheat flour, eggs, yoghurt, water, sunflower oil, wine vinegar and salt. The dough is freshly made for each batch and is not frozen. It is stretched and pulled by hand until it is paper-thin, translucent, elastic and slightly shiny, without tearing.

For the filling, the baker mixes cheese and eggs and scatters the mixture with a special hand movement over half or all of the sheet of dough, depending on whether the dough is folded or rolled. It is rolled or folded only lengthways. The filled dough is laid in an even spiral in round tins, brushed with the yoghurt and egg mixture and baked, part-baked or frozen. All steps take place in the area. Next to the name, the label states the form of sale: fully baked, frozen part-baked or frozen unbaked.

Origin & history

The area covers Tulcea and Constanța counties, which together form Dobruja (Romanian Dobrogea), after which the pastry is named. Its protection rests on its reputation and on the skill of the bakers, passed down from generation to generation, above all in stretching the dough and filling it.

According to a 2018 article in the magazine Ferma, Plăcintă dobrogeană has been made for over 150 years. At the 2009 harvest festival in the municipality of Cumpăna, according to a local newspaper, the largest Plăcintă dobrogeană ever was the attraction. Traditionally it is served at major religious festivals: in the “white week” before Lent, at Christmas, on the feast of the church’s patron saint and at New Year, and also at weddings and on the “Tuesday after the wedding”, for which the bride bakes it.