Shangi look like a mixture of pirozhki and vatrushki: open yeasted dough buns with rich toppings like potatoes, cottage cheese, fish, millet or buckwheat porridge. Simple and unpretentious food, shangi nourished the ancient people who lived on Russian soil in pre-Slavic times. Unlike pirozhki or pelmeni, shangi are less known even in Russia, being mostly a regional dish in northern Russia and the Urals.
But if you wish to adorn your table with age-old Russian food, come and join us! We’ll cook one of the most common varieties — shangi with potatoes.
Dough
250 ml (1 cup of milk)
12g (4 teaspoons) yeast powder
6g (one teaspoon) salt
10g (2,5 teaspoons) sugar
50g (0.2 cups) butter
450g (3.6 cups) flour
Add salt, sugar and yeast powder to the milk. Stir thoroughly. Pour the blend into the sifted flour. Mix the dough. Add melted butter and continue mixing the dough. Cover the dough, put it in a warm place, leave for 2 hours.
Topping
700g (1.7 lb) potatoes
15g (2.5 teaspoons) salt
2 eggs
125 ml (1/2 cup) milk
60g (1/4 cup) sour cream
Mash the dry boiled potatoes. Add milk while mashing. Add salt. Take the eggs, separate the whites from the yolks. Mix the mashed potato with the whites. Whip the yolks with sour cream.
Roll out the dough, cut it into pieces, make thin oval shapes out of them. Put them on the baking pan. Spread the mashed potato on top of the dough pieces. Pour on the yolks and sour cream blend.
Put the shangi into the oven preheated to 180 C. Bake for 35-40 minutes.
Now you're ready for a feast from ancient times!
Russian Oven is a video series devoted to Russian pastries, featuring traditional age-old pies and cakes, inventive cookies and tarts of recent years, plus Soviet classics and much more. Stay tuned!
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