Following A Recipe (sorta): Taylor's Piroshki Recipe by TAYLORSMOMMY

My ex-husband LOVES pirogi. (I believe that is the proper way to spell the plural of pirozhki or "piroshki", but I may be wrong. I'm not up on my Russian and am falling back on the wikipedia article on this topic.)

At any rate, he loves those things and buys them at the fair every year. I like thinking about things that I can do for him, and so it dawned on me that although I've never heard of anyone I know cooking these things...Russians probably made them before fairs. haha

So, with amazingly little work I tracked down a recipe (and then tweaked it a bit). The original involves frying, while my recipe involves baking. I realized I could do that from reading all of the comments on the recipe, so I can't take any credit for it. I added garlic and sharp cheese.

This is the first time that I've made a bread with yeast by hand. I think it worked out great!

I ran out of eggs while making this recipe, so I'm reminding myself right now to check the amount of eggs I have before trying this again.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 1 red onion, chopped up fairly fine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a few shakes ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried dill weed (alter to preference)
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used canola, and that was fine.)
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups all-purpose flour to start (You will add lots more.)
• Around 11 small (1-2cm cubes) sharp cheese
  
  

  Meat section:
  

  1. Brown meat in a skillet, on medium heat. I used the 3 or 4 setting on my stove.  Once the meat looks evenly brown, try to drain off the fat as much as you can. I'm sure that there are great ways to do this, but I sort of tip the pan while guarding the meat with a spatula and draining fat into a container (for later clean up).
  2. Stir in chopped red onion, salt, pepper, dill weed, and garlic. Cook until the onions seem pretty translucent.
  3. Pour meat mixture into a bowl to cool. Refrigerate.

  Bread Section

  1. Pour packet of yeast into 1/4 cup of warm (but not super hot) water. Put it in sort of a warm location, if available. Wait about 15 minutes, until the yeast becomes frothy.
  2. Heat milk in a pan over low heat. I set my burners on 1 or 2.
  3. Combine eggs, oil, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Put two cups of flour in a different and larger bowl.
  4. When the milk gets warm, add the contents of the small bowl (eggs and such) to the milk. Use a whisk to sort of agitate the stuff gently. As soon as it looks warmed up and well mixed, remove from the burner.
  5. Slowly pour milk mixture into the flour bowl while stirring. 
  6. Add half of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  7. Add a cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  8. Add last of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  9. Add another cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  10. Assess the texture of the mixture, and add flour until the bread seems to be a dough that forms into a ball and isn't sticking to the bowl. (This took quite a bit of flour when I did it. I probably put another two cups or so into it.)
  11. Knead it to make sure it is evenly mixed, but don't mix it a bunch after it seems pretty even.
  12. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and set in a warm location. Give it at least 30 minutes. (I didn't notice the dough really rising, but I got tired of waiting after 30 minutes and just did my thing.)

  Putting It Together

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Get out two cookie sheets, and cover in parchment paper.
  3. Uncover bread dough bowl, and retrieve meat bowl.
  4. Pinch off a handful of dough and roll into a small pizza like disk about 4-5 inches in diameter.
  5. Put at least two heaping tablespoons of meat mixture in the middle. 
  6. Put a cheese cube in the center of the meat mixture.
  7. Close the dough over the meat, and pinch closed.
  8. Roll them slightly in your hands, smoothing any rough bits out. 
  9. Place completed meat/dough sphere on parchment paper covered cookie sheets.
  10. Do steps 4-9 approximately 11 times. In other words, make balls of meat until you run out of stuff.
  11. Let them all sit for about 10 minutes before cooking.
  12. Place in the oven and bake for 18 minutes.

 Verdict: These are awesome! Everyone in the house ate them up, and wanted a whole lot more. My only regret was that I thought that they could have had more meat to the amount of bread. I really liked these, although the prep time on this is sort of outrageous (at least for me). If you don't mind a project, they are well worth the time.

Right out of the oven

Action shot of it being delivered to the ex-husband.

Natural light. The bread really did turn out nice!

YUM!