Whence
Khachapuri (cheese bread)
Food

Where does Khachapuri (cheese bread) come from?

Khachapuri comes from Georgia, in the Caucasus. Its name means roughly 'cottage-cheese bread', and this leavened bread filled with cheese is Georgia's national dish, served everywhere from corner bakeries and street stalls to smart restaurants.

A bread for every region

Khachapuri is a leavened dough shaped in different ways and filled with cheese, sometimes with eggs or other fillings. Nearly every region of Georgia has its own version. Imeruli, from Imereti, is the most popular: a thick, double-crusted round filled with salty white Imeretian cheese. Megruli, from Samegrelo, gets more cheese melted on top. In Samtskhe–Javakheti, penovani is made with flaky puff pastry, and in Adjara, on the Black Sea, the bread is shaped like a boat.

Old roots, modern index

Specialists disagree about how old khachapuri is. Darra Goldstein, author of The Georgian Feast, says it probably dates back to the 12th century, a period of renaissance in Georgia, though its exact roots remain unclear. Today it is so central to daily life that economists at the ISET Policy Institute in Tbilisi track inflation with a Khachapuri Index: the cost of the flour, cheese, eggs, milk, butter and yeast for one Imeretian khachapuri, compared across Georgian cities.

Why people think of Turkey

Georgia borders Turkey, and pide, a Turkish bread baked with fillings such as cheese and egg, is especially popular in Turkey's Black Sea region. Next to Adjarian khachapuri, filled with cheese and topped with butter and an egg yolk, the two can look much alike. But khachapuri is Georgian, with its own regional styles. As a Tbilisi chef explained to the BBC, the Adjarian bread is a boat because Adjara lies on the Black Sea: the cheese is the sea and the egg is the sun.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Khachapuri ↗ · bbc.com ↗ · iset-pi.ge ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › İçli pide ↗ · hurriyet.com.tr ↗

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