Bougatsa Recipe (Thessaloniki Custard Pastry)

Bougatsa is what Thessaloniki eats for breakfast, standing at a counter at seven in the morning, cut into squares with a pair of scissors and handed over in paper. It came with refugees from Asia Minor in the 1920s and the city adopted it completely.

It is often confused with galaktoboureko and they are genuinely different. Galaktoboureko has a firm semolina custard and is drenched in syrup. Bougatsa has a much looser, softer, milkier custard and gets no syrup at all, only icing sugar and cinnamon dusted over at the end.

That looser custard is the point and it is also the thing people get wrong by cooking it too far. It should be pourable and only just thickened when it goes into the pastry.

Key preparation steps

1. Cook the semolina custard only until it thickly coats a spoon, not until stiff.
2. Cool it slightly and beat in the eggs off the heat.
3. Build a phyllo base, pour in the custard, seal the top.
4. Bake until deep gold, then cut with scissors and dust generously.

How is bougatsa different from galaktoboureko?

Three things. The custard is looser and milkier, using less semolina for the same quantity of milk. There is no syrup at all. And it is finished with icing sugar and cinnamon dusted over the top, which is done after cutting rather than before.

The result is a breakfast pastry rather than a dessert. It is sweet but not very sweet, and the dominant flavour is milk and cinnamon rather than sugar syrup.

There are also savoury bougatsa, filled with minced meat or with cheese, which are common in Thessaloniki and eaten at the same counters. The cheese version uses a mixture of feta and a soft fresh cheese.

Getting the custard consistency right

Around 100 g of fine semolina to a litre of milk, which is roughly half what galaktoboureko uses. Cook it until it thickly coats the back of a spoon and no further.

It will thicken more as it cools and again in the oven, so a custard that looks correct in the pan will be stodgy in the finished pastry. Err loose.

Take it off the heat, let it cool for five minutes, then beat in the eggs in a thin stream while whisking hard. Vanilla and a strip of lemon peel infused in the milk both belong here.

Why it is cut with scissors

Every bougatsa counter in Thessaloniki cuts with scissors, and it is genuinely better than a knife. A knife presses down and squashes the layers, pushing custard out of the sides. Scissors cut through cleanly from above without compressing anything.

Cut after baking, not before. Unlike baklava, bougatsa is not syruped, so there is no need to open channels beforehand, and the top layers stay crisper if left whole in the oven.

Cut into squares and then dust generously with icing sugar and cinnamon, so the sugar falls into the cuts as well as over the top.

Serving

Warm, within an hour of baking, with a Greek coffee. That is how it is eaten and it is noticeably better than at room temperature.

It does not keep well. The pastry softens overnight and the custard firms up, so it is best made on the day. If you have leftovers, reheat in a hot oven for five minutes to bring the crispness back, never a microwave.

What matters in this dish