How to cook Georgian bread. Watching the work of mtskhobeli or how tonis puri (bread in the tone oven) is baked in Georgia

Not far from our house there is a bakery, in Georgian "tone". We pass by it a few times a day, and the warmth and aroma of freshly baked puri ooze through the small green window for selling bread into the street. Once we gave up, it was impossible to resist the inviting smell and we entered the bakery where we were met by the smiling owner of the bakery, Tina, who was not at all surprised by our visit. We asked her about the opportunity to learn more about the culture of baking bread, to which she said that you can come tomorrow.

The next day, we were met at the bakery by a family artel consisting of: Tina, already familiar to us, her cousin Livan - who worked there in the position "mtskhobeli" -that is, translated from Georgian as "baker", Granda - uncle Tina, he was engaged in kneading dough and extracting ready-made bread from the oven and David, the bakery's distributor.

Depending on the form, Georgian bread is divided into:

1) Shoti- This is an oblong cake in the shape of an eye, with a hole in the middle and convex on one side.

2) Dadas puri(translated from Georgian - "mother's bread") - this is an oval-shaped cake with a hole in the middle.

3) Pita- in the form of a circle.

Puri is baked in a special oven - tone, it resembles a volcano in shape, consists of several layers: 1. refractory brick 2. then this layer is covered with a mixture of salt and chamut 3. Covered with cotton cloth or burlap 4. Finally, a thin layer of asbestos is applied. Furnaces are on gas, electricity and wood.

The temperature inside is 700-800 C. On average, 54 loaves enter the oven. There are tone for the mass production of bread, in the villages there are similar ones, but smaller, they are made of clay. In rural ovens, shoti is stuck by hand, usually done by women. Only men lay bread in baking ovens, as you need to have remarkable dexterity and endurance in order to endure immersion in the oven mouth when laying bread.

Every time we saw how Lebanon dives into the furnace to fix another shoti, we groaned and gasped, tried to grab the desperate mtskhobeli by the leg, fearing that he would fall into the fiery funnel. And he just smiled and sank even deeper to the bottom, so that only his legs stuck out.

Puri is molded on the walls of the oven with a special convex pillow. An indicator that the bread is fixed correctly is a characteristic slap-ok.

After 10-12 min. bread will be golden - so you can take it out. This is done with a pair of special sticks with a hook and a scraper at the ends.

Georgian bread recipe

Ingredients:

Flour - 1kg.

Water - 700 ml.

Salt - 30 gr.

Yeast - 2g.

Cooking:

1) Pour flour and yeast into warm water, knead thoroughly for 10-15 minutes, cover with a cloth and let it brew for 40 minutes.

2) Then add salt, cover and leave for another 30 minutes.

3) Put the dough on the table, cut into pieces about 500g each, let stand for 15 minutes.

4) Give the pieces the shape of koloboks and leave for 10-15 minutes.

5) Knead the dough with your hands, giving the desired shape, make a hole in the middle, this is so that the bread does not swell.

6) Place in a heated oven for 10-12 minutes.

Hot puri is good with suluguni and fresh milk.

P. S . : “Bread can be baked in the oven or build a Georgian tone to make the process archaicJ»

Thanks:

Thanks to the family bakery at the address: Georgia, Tbilisi, Queen Ketevan Avenue 25, Avlabari metro station.

Skeet chiefs, Guzel and Ho

Bread in Georgian: “puri”, and oven: “tone”.

Now it is not difficult to guess that "tonis puri" - literally translated: "bread from the oven." Tone resembles a stone well. It is dug into the ground and lined with clay bricks from the inside. The fire is kindled at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

It must be borne in mind that Georgian peasants bake different types of bread in tone - both loaves, and "bricks" and "shoti" - bread, which will be discussed in this post. Therefore, the name "tonis puri" is broad. This can be called any bread that is baked in tone.

“Shoti” is the same “Georgian bread”, which in Russia (and in Georgia in Russian) is sometimes called “lavash”, or “Georgian lavash”. This is the wrong definition. The correct name for such bread is "shoti" or "shotis puri".

But such traditional Georgian bread baked in tone comes in different shapes - round (which is usually called "Georgian lavash"), rectangular, with rounded corners, called "dedis puri" (mother's bread) "and the shoti itself is diamond-shaped with elongated tips. In fact, all this is shotis puri.

As for the word "lavash", it is of Armenian origin. Armenian lavash is a thin flatbread. It is good to wrap cheese with herbs or kebab with onions in it.

Armenian lavash and Georgian shoti are good in their own way, but they are completely different types of bread. As mentioned above, shotis puri is baked in a special oven, which is dug into the ground and lined with kripich.

It is best to eat it hot or warm. So it's much tastier. Shoti is indispensable when eating dishes such as khashi (soup of beef legs and offal), kharcho (thick and spicy Georgian beef soup with rice and spices), satsivi (ideally turkey, more often chicken in nut sauce), lobio ( thick red bean soup with spices), chanakhi (coarsely chopped fatty lamb with tomatoes, eggplant, onions, herbs - everything is baked in portions in clay pots)...

In addition, it is worth eating Georgian cheeses with shoti - sulguni milk coming from milk, velvety Imeretian cheese, guda from goat milk with a pungent smell ...

With such bread, ready-made shish kebab is removed from skewers. A whole shoti is placed on the dish, shish kebab is laid on the bread (in pieces or directly on skewers), and on top, so as not to cool down, they cover with another whole shoti and serve it on the table. Shoti is soaked in hot meat juice and the aroma of barbecue and in itself turns into a very tasty dish.

In Tbilisi, bakeries that bake shoti are literally at every step. Shotis puri usually weighs 400 grams. One such bread costs 70 - 80 tetri (approximately 45 - 55 cents). The smell of such freshly baked bread spreads along the street, filling all the nooks and crannies and causing profuse salivation.

Here is an ordinary bakery located in the station area. The sign says "tone". You already know that "tone" is the oven in which shoti is baked.

Above tone hood.

Unassuming environment. Simple icons, sieve, clock. Under the ceiling is a light bulb. Everything is inexpensive. This is a business that will feed one family. On average, from 120 to 200 loaves are sold per day.

Baker - Zurab. The bakery is owned by Mamuka, who allowed me to make this photo essay.

Oven - tone. Runs on gas. In the villages, the tone are wood-burning, as in ancient times, when each household had its own tone.

Zurab kindles the stove with a piece of paper fixed on a pole.

Libra from my childhood. The twisted ends reminded me of ducks. I remember staring at them with might and main when I went to the market with my parents and the peasants weighed us eggplants, cucumbers, peaches, grapes, sauerkraut ...

Zurab gives the dough the desired shape. I said that it can be different. Here they bake "dedis puri" - "mother's bread", rectangular with rounded corners.

To give shape, a foot is used, a board on which lies a thick layer of sponge with cotton wool, covered with dense matter.

Another purpose of the foot is to bring the finished dough into the oven. The dough should stick to the inner wall of the oven. Deftly wielding his paw, the baker slaps the dough onto the hot bricks.

Tone fills up and Zurab has to "dive" deeper and deeper into it.

The final stage of filling the furnace resembles a circus act. Tone becomes a giant predatory worm from a Hollywood blockbuster with slippered feet protruding from its mouth.

In the meantime, the bread is toasted, and acquires a delicious golden hue.

This goldenness evokes pleasant thoughts about sulguni cheese cut into thick slices, sweetish choport (from the town of Choporti) tomatoes, kupaty (sausages made from coarsely chopped minced meat or giblets mixed with pomegranate seeds) and a large earthenware jug of good "Kakhetinsky".

Zurab takes out the finished shotis puri from the tone. It's some kind of balancing act.

Step by step preparation of classic shotis puri:

1. First you need to dissolve dry yeast in water. It must be warm. Then add flour and salt. Knead the dough by hand, knead for at least 10-15 minutes. The dough will be quite thick.
2. Sprinkle a deep bowl with flour and transfer the dough into it. Cover with cling film and leave for 2 hours. During this time, the dough should rise and increase in size.
3. After the time has elapsed, divide the dough into 3 parts. Roll each one into balls. Sprinkle the work surface with flour and place the resulting balls there. Leave them for another 10 minutes.
4. Next, from each part, you need to form a shoti. In its shape, it resembles a canoe or a kayak boat. Pull out the edges of the cake. Make a small hole in the middle.
5. We preheat the tandoor to 250-300 degrees. We bake cakes in it for 10-15 minutes. Serve still hot, it's much tastier.

If you add a little cheese to shotis puri, the bread will turn out even more fragrant and tender. The main secret of this baking is that the cheese must be added twice. Directly into the dough itself and sprinkle on top when the cake is almost ready. In this case, you can use hard cheese of any kind. Shotis puri cake already has its own special taste, and cheese melting in your mouth will give it a peculiar zest. It would be very useful to add some Provencal herbs to Georgian shotis puri with cheese.

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 300 g
• Water - 250 ml
• Yeast (dry) - 1/2 tsp
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Hard cheese - 200 g
• Provence herbs - to taste
• Egg - 1 pc.

Step by step preparation of cheese shotis puri:

1. Dissolve dry yeast in warm water. Next, add the sifted wheat flour and salt. After that, you need to knead the dough. You have to knead it by hand. Transfer the dough into a deep bowl, in which you must first sprinkle the bottom with flour. Leave to approach for 1.5 hours.
2. Grate the cheese on a coarse grater. After the time has elapsed, add 2/3 of the cheese and Provence herbs to the dough and continue to knead it for another 5-7 minutes.
3. From the resulting dough, we form shotis puri, which in its shape resembles a long canoe. We make a small hole in the center of the cake so that the dough does not rise too much and the cake does not look like a big ball. Beat the chicken egg and brush it completely over the cake. We cover the baking sheet with parchment. Sprinkle with flour and lay out the cake.
4. We heat the oven to the maximum. It's about 230-250 degrees. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
5. 5-7 minutes before readiness, take out of the oven, sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Put the baking sheet back on. Turn off the oven and leave the shoti there for another 5 minutes. Serve hot to the table.

Your shoti will turn out just as delicious and even more satisfying if you add pieces of bacon to it. For the preparation of such bread, it is better to use already cut into thin slices. It is better to take thinly sliced ​​bacon to give the bread a light smoky note and at the same time not to kill all the taste of the bread.

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 400 g
• Yeast - 1/2 tsp
• Water - 300 ml
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Bacon - 10 slices
• Egg - 1 pc.

Step by step preparation of shotis puri with bacon:

1. First you need to dilute the yeast. For this we use warm water. Add sifted wheat flour and salt. We knead the dough. It must be kneaded by hand. Sprinkle a deep bowl with flour and transfer the dough there. Cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for 2 hours. During this time, the dough will rise slightly.
2. It is better to use bacon already cut into slices. If not, cut it yourself. Pieces should be as thin and small as possible. Cut the slices into small pieces too. When the dough is ready, add the bacon pieces to it and continue to knead for another 5 minutes.
3. Sprinkle the work surface with flour. Put the dough on it. Then divide it into 3 parts and form shoties that look like thin kayak boats. Make a small hole in the middle.
4. Whisk an egg in a bowl and brush your tortillas with a pastry brush.
5. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes. In this case, the oven must be heated to the maximum temperature.

It is important to know! 5 minutes before cooking, you can put bacon cubes and greens inside the tortillas.

This recipe differs from the rest in that it will take a minimum of time to prepare it. Thanks to additional ingredients, shoti is even more fragrant and soft. Due to the fact that, in addition to the main ingredients, additional ones are added to the dough, such a cake will remain soft and airy longer. It is best served with hot second courses.

Ingredients:

• Yeast (dry) - 20 g
• Water - 100 ml
• Milk - 100 ml
• Onions - to taste
• Sunflower oil - 75 g
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Wheat flour - 500 g

Step-by-step preparation of shotis puri with seasoning:

1. First you need to make a dough. To do this, mix the yeast and 5 tablespoons of flour. We fill everything with water. It is important that it is warm. And leave the dough for 25 minutes.
2. In the meantime, finely chop the onion, add oil. It must first be taken out of the refrigerator, it should be soft. Salt and pour everything with a glass of milk. The milk needs to be warmed up a little beforehand.
3. Mix well and combine with dough. Then gradually add flour. Knead the dough by hand. It must be flexible enough.
4. Sprinkle the work surface with flour. We spread the dough and divide it into 4 parts. From each we form shotis puri. We cover the baking sheet with parchment, sprinkle it with flour. We lay out our cakes in the form of boats.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, according to the shotis puri recipe, in a well-heated oven. Open the oven door a little 5 minutes before it's done. Thus, your bread will turn out with a crispy crust.

It is not necessary to use yeast to make shotis puri. They can be replaced with natural sourdough, which can also be prepared at home. This will take a lot of time, it will roam for about a week. If you did not have time to prepare it in advance, then you can buy it ready-made.

As you know, yeast is added to bread so that the dough comes up faster. Yeast-free shotis puri is more beneficial. Thanks to natural sourdough, which is added instead of yeast, lactic acid bacteria are produced. This bread retains the maximum amount of nutrients.

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 400 g
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Sugar - 1/4 tsp
• Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp.
• Natural sourdough - 150 g
• Water - 200 ml

Step by step preparation of shotis puri yeast-free bread:

1. Pour flour into a deep bowl. Add salt, sugar and vegetable oil. Fill with warm water. Mix well and let cool slightly. After cooling, add natural yogurt and knead the dough. It shouldn't get very thick.
2. Sprinkle the work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Divide it into 3 parts and leave for 10-15 minutes. After that, form shoti from each, which in their shape resemble kayak boats.
3. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Sprinkle it with flour and lay out shotis puri. Bake in a well preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.

Shotis puri video recipes

There is one beautiful Georgian proverb: “A bad person will never make good wine”, the same can be said about bread. Only a kind and attentive person will be able to bake delicious bread - with a soul, giving him his warmth and good mood. In general, knowledgeable people say that they love bread when they sing to it, that's when it turns out to be truly fragrant and crispy...

There is a sign in front of me with the inscription “Tone”, I go into the room on the ground floor and it throws me into a fever - the heat comes from a round oven made of refractory bricks, called tone - they bake bread in it. The hospitable host with undisguised pleasure tells how to properly bake a real shoti, the recipe of which he received from his grandfather by inheritance.

The most important thing is to prepare the right dough: to bake 120 shotis (700 g each), you will need 50 kg of flour, 1.5 kg of salt, 150 g of dry yeast and 33 liters of water. In warm water, you need to dilute the yeast, add flour and mix well, then cover the bowl with the dough with a cloth and leave to rise for 1.5 hours (exactly an hour later, stir again, and then after half an hour). Next, make round and fluffy cakes (it is better to grease your hands with margarine so that the dough does not stick), cover with a cloth for 10 minutes, then give the cakes a more elongated look and close again for 10 minutes. And then, on a special pillow, give the cake the shape of a boat and make a small hole in the middle so that the air does not collect in the shoti. Attach to the walls of a red-hot oven, wait 10 minutes and hot, crispy shoti is ready.

Inspired by the experience of baking Georgian bread, I wanted to bake bread myself. And remembering the words of the famous culinary specialist V.V. Pokhlebkin: “Not a single culinary achievement convinces a person so much of his abilities and ability to cook and does not give him such culinary confidence and dexterity as the ability to bake bread with his own hands,” I decided to try. I can’t bake Georgian bread yet, because I don’t have a special tone oven at home, but ordinary bread is fine.
Many people think that baking bread is an extremely complicated and long process, that you need to have some special equipment and experience, but in fact it is very simple and fast - in just 15-30 minutes.

I quote Pokhlebkin again:
"What should be done?

1. Take: 35 - 50 grams of yeast (from a third to half a pack), 0.5 cups of water, 1 - 2 tablespoons of flour. Mix everything together in a bowl, set aside.

2. Finely chop or mince the onion.

3. Light up the oven.

4. Pour the yeast mixture into a large bowl, add half a glass of water or milk and about a third of a glass of sunflower oil to it. Mix everything quickly, but diligently, add chopped chopped onion, salt (a pinch or two), then gradually add flour and stir all the time until a dough is formed that does not stick to your hands.

This moment is important not to miss. The main thing is that the dough does not turn out too steep; This means that flour should be added gradually, until it, while still being very soft and tender, at the same time completely lags behind the hands. After kneading such a dough well, make koloboks about the size of an apple or a little less from it and flatten each of these balls into a cake about one and a half centimeters thick. Put these cakes on a sheet and at a distance of about one and a half to two centimeters from each other, draw deep lines on these cakes with a knife, making them seem to be striped.

Let the bread stand for 2-3 minutes before putting it in the oven, or put it in the oven right away, because it will already be hot in the kitchen by this time. Notice the time. After 10 minutes, look, pierce with a pointed match. If the cakes are reddened, but there are still traces of dough on the match, let stand in the oven for another 2-3 minutes. But no more. Take it out, spread it on a wooden board (plywood), cover with a towel, a piece of linen. Your bread is ready. It all took no more than 20 minutes, including cutting. Try the cooked bread after 25 minutes, not earlier: only then will it acquire its real taste. Well, how? Tasty! And how! And it's not difficult at all."

Try it too! Can you imagine how the faces of your family will stretch out when you serve homemade bread for breakfast?? =)

1. Mix 100 g of flour and 100 ml of slightly warm water - the consistency of thick sour cream should be. Leave for 24 hours in a warm place, stir occasionally. When bubbles appear, add another 100 g of flour and pour 100 ml of water so that the original consistency is obtained. Leave it warm for a day again. Then add 100 g of flour and 100 ml of water for the third time and watch for the appearance of bubbles: when the mass has doubled in volume, divide it in half - put one part in a glass jar, cover with a plastic lid with holes so that the starter “breathes”, and the second part can be used immediately.

2. Knead the dough from the sifted flour, sourdough and 250 ml of lukewarm water. Knead for about 15 minutes, add salt, mix again, roll the dough into a ball, sprinkle the surface with flour and put in a warm place for 8-10 hours.

3. In the morning there will be no more flour on the surface of the dough - it will be absorbed. Knead the dough again, cover with a towel and leave to rise for another 2 hours.

4. Divide the dough into pieces of 200 g, roll into balls, then roll each ball into a round or oval cake about 1 cm thick or stretch into a long "sausage".

5. The clay oven must be well heated. Bakers “dive” into it waist-deep and, using a special press, glue the dough to the hot wall. Bread is baked until golden brown, about 20 minutes, then it is removed with an iron tong and put to cool under a towel.

If you fundamentally decided to bake tonis puri at home, but you don’t have a clay oven. it may be advised to place in an oven preheated to the maximum and heat a couple of refractory clean bricks strongly, and then place the dough on them. Sprinkle the bread with water from time to time. Maybe you'll get it right! If you don’t have the patience to mess around with sourdough starters, make a yeast dough, but for tonis puri it needs to rise less than for regular bread - about 1 hour.