I am a simple person. I see a bakery, I go inside a bakery. Or at the very least, I stare at the goods in the window display like a hungry orphan from a Dickens novel. A cup of coffee and a baked good is our usual go-to lunch while exploring cities or during a quick stop driving through the countryside. Which is why I was so excited to see my old friend, the burek, in a bakery on our first day in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The first time I saw this buttery, layered phyllo pastry stuffed with salted cheese or savory ground beef was in Albania, where it was called a byrek, and we consumed it almost daily for lunch, breakfast, or sometimes both. Also worth noting: a byrek in Albania was at least five times cheaper than a burek in Bosnia. But with prices running about 30 cents versus $2.50, I wasn’t exactly filing for bankruptcy over a pastry.
But what should have been a straightforward, face-stuffing, belly-busting meal turned out to be a bit more complicated in Bosnia.
“This is not a burek!” our city guide in Sarajevo said heatedly, pointing at a delicious burek in a bakery display. “Do not call this a burek!”
The tourists around us shuffled nervously. I could tell many had already made this mistake.
“Burek has beef!” the guide explained. “If no meat, not a burek! Cheese is sirnica. Spinach is zeljanica. Potatoes, krompiruša. Pumpkin, tikvenjača. Got it?”
The stunned silence was broken only by an exasperated groan from a woman nearby. I giggled quietly. To me, the words sounded close enough to Russian that they were easy to pronounce and memorize. The Americans and Western Europeans in the group looked less enthusiastic.
“Can I just ask for a burek with cheese?” someone finally asked.
“Sure,” the guide replied, dripping with sarcasm. “If you want a meat burek with a slice of cheese slapped on top!”
Over nine days in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we tasted them all—burek with savory beef, sirnica with salty cottage cheese filling, zeljanica packed with spinach, krompiruša (possibly Victor’s favorite) with potatoes and onions, and tikvenjača with sweet pumpkin puree. We ate them in every form: coiled spirals, neat slices from giant round pies, cigar rolls, even triangles. Sometimes they even came with an unsolicited Ayran, the salty yogurt drink, as if no order of burek was complete without it. To this day, we don’t know if Ayran was included automatically in every burek order or if the bakery employee simply felt bad for the clueless tourists and threw in the Ayran for free. Another restaurant covered the pastries with thick yogurt, just in case you were still lacking dairy.
My favorite burek-related story happened on the road to Ljubuški, when I forced us to pull over because (see the beginning of this post) I saw a bakery. As Victor debated sirnica versus krompiruša, displayed as two massive wheeled pies, I noticed a large old-fashioned brick oven in the corner. Strange contraptions were mounted on it - shallow round pans with hot coals, the same size as the giant bureks in the display. Mystery solved: I finally discovered how a burek is made.
Later, I learned it was a sač oven, a traditional Balkan method where a dome-shaped metal lid is placed over the pastry and covered with glowing embers. The slow cooking keeps the burek juicy inside, crispy outside, and irresistible to both hungry tourists and locals.
Just as I raised my camera to take a picture, a man emerged from the kitchen and blocked my view. I lowered my camera and smiled. His whole face lit up. He gestured wildly, called into the kitchen, and soon another man appeared, oven mitts still on his hands. The first man wrapped an arm around him, said something excitedly in Bosnian, and posed them both in front of me. The second man, clearly interrupted in the middle of an important burek-making process, looked reluctant at first but quickly realized this ordeal would end faster if he just smiled. I laughed, snapped the photo, and they both disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving me to finally photograph the oven, now seemingly dull in comparison to my unexpected “burek portrait.”
I am happy to report that leaving Bosnia only temporarily disrupted my burek-eating habit. Just a few months later, while visiting with Victor’s family in Türkiye, I was happy to discover my old friend, now called börek and priced at 50 cents, proudly displayed in the windows of every bakery. We’ve since learned that burek originated with the Ottoman Turks and is still found in most countries that were once part of their empire, including Türkiye, Greece, North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Ever since I discovered this, it’s become my personal mission to track down every variation of burek, byrek, boureka, or börek I can find. So fair warning: if it’s on the menu, I’m coming for it, with anywhere from loose change to a few dollars in hand.
A few Türkiye posts coming up soon. But first, we’ll finish off the Bosnian stories with “What Else Is on the Menu? Bosnian Food Edition.”
