Kurnik in Russia was called a dome-shaped pie with a multilayer filling, the obligatory component of which was chicken meat. Such a cake was baked for various celebrations as the main decoration of the festive table.
In the classic version of cooking, the chicken is baked from puff pastry. Of course, today you can buy such dough in the store, but it’s better to cook it yourself. To make puff pastry for a chicken coop, the recipe of which is given below, you will have to be patient as it takes a long time to prepare.
For the test, we need about three hundred grams of flour, one hundred and fifty grams of cream margarine or butter, one hundred and fifty milliliters of water, a little salt and a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice.
From the flour with the addition of water and salt, knead the dough, which should not be too steep. Knead the margarine, mix with a spoon of flour (chop with a knife, but do not rub it with your hands) and a few drops of vinegar. This oil mixture should be very cold, so after kneading it must be stored in the refrigerator for about twenty minutes.
We roll out the prepared dough in the form of a cake, in the middle of which we spread the oil mass removed from the refrigerator. We turn the cake in the form of an envelope and roll it out. Turn four times again and roll out into a flat cake again. We remove the four-fold dough into the refrigerator for half an hour, and then repeat the above operations with rolling two more times, keeping the dough in the cold between them. The chicken puff pastry is ready, you can start cooking the pie.
As you can see, making a real puff pastry takes time. But you can go the other way and make a “false” puff pastry for the chicken coop. The recipe for such a test is much simpler.
We need two glasses of flour, about a hundred grams of sour cream, two hundred grams of butter, a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and one egg. The oil for making such a dough should be frozen, and all other products should be kept in the refrigerator for a bit so that they are cold.
Grate the butter and mix it with flour to make crumbs. At the same time, it is not recommended to knead flour with butter by hand, since the butter can melt and the effect of layering of the dough is not achieved. A mixture of flour and butter is collected in the mound, at the top of which we make a "funnel". Pour an egg whipped with salt and sour cream into this cavity and quickly knead the dough. We put the finished dough in the refrigerator for one hour, wrapping it first in film. As you can see, the “false” puff pastry for the chicken coop, the recipe of which is given above, cooks much faster.
As already mentioned, the kurnik is made with a multi-layer filling, and the layers should be separated from each other using pancakes. Therefore, in addition to the main test, you should prepare a pancake dough for a chicken coop. The recipe for this test is simple.
For half a glass of milk you need to take one egg, fifty grams of flour and thirty grams of butter. Sugar and salt are added to the dough to taste.
From the listed ingredients, knead the liquid pancake dough and bake a few thin pancakes.
Today, a henhouse is sometimes baked not only from puff, but also from shortcrust pastry. Therefore, it is worth learning how to cook butter dough for a chicken coop. For this type of dough, we need two hundred grams of sour cream and margarine, two egg yolks (we don’t need proteins), about two glasses of flour, a bag of baking powder, half a tablespoon of sugar and a little salt.
Grind the yolks with sugar and salt, then add soft, but not melted margarine, sour cream into this mass, and at the end add flour mixed with baking powder. The mixed dough is sent to the refrigerator for about twenty minutes.
We talked about how to make dough for a chicken coop, and various options are used as a filling for this pie. For example, as the first filling, which will be closer to the bottom of the pie, you can take boiled rice mixed with chopped eggs and butter. The second layer can be the filling of chicken meat, and on top of it - the filling of boiled mushrooms.
Going the henhouse like that. We divide the dough into two parts and roll out half-centimeter thick cakes from them. We put one cake in a greased round shape so that its edges hang from the sides. Then we put the first pancake on the dough. We put rice filling on top and cover it with a second pancake. Then we spread the remaining types of fillings, separating them from each other with pancakes. The top layer also put pancake. Then we cover all this “construction” with a second dough cake, pinch the edges, forming a cake. On top, you can decorate the kurnik with figures from the dough. Then grease the surface of the pie with a beaten egg, make a few punctures on top for steam to escape and bake the chicken in the oven.