When I was growing up in Serbia, guests often stopped by unannounced and Mother had dozens of recipes for easy, quick pastries and breads to serve with cold beer or wine. As the time went by, she experimented with various flours and ingredients, trying to make these welcome snacks as healthy as possible.
One of the quickest and most versatile dishes she could whip out without breaking sweat or ignoring the conversation was this savory bread known in the Balkans as Spanish or Royal Pie. She always had all the necessary ingredients in the pantry, and she was quite creative in using whatever she could find in the fridge or the vegetable basket to add as flavoring: pickles, preserved peppers, roasted red pepper relish (“ajvar”), bacon, ham, smoked sausage, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, or caramelized onions.
I don’t have to worry about unexpected guests here in my southern California home, but I always looked forward to this ever-changing snack and I wanted to give my girls a chance to experience a little bit of my childhood.
I ground white rice in my new Wondermill and rice flour consistency reminded me of corn meal, which gave me the idea to use it in this recipe. It is not as sweet, but it adds a little bit of bite and crunch, and would be a great substitute for people who cannot eat corn.
I scrounged around the refrigerator and found several add-ons that worked wonderfully. I only wished I had some cooked yellow corn to add another color to this already colorful dish. But, there is always the next time!
The bread is very forgiving and easy to mix. It took me about fifteen minutes from chopping up the ingredients to pouring the dough into the prepared Pyrex pan.
I did not know what to expect from rice flour once I put the bread into the oven, but it came out just like I remembered it, golden brown, fluffy, and filled with little tasty surprises.
When I sliced the bread, I wished that guests would suddenly appear on my doorstep and savor my creation. But I am certain that my girls enjoyed it as much as I did when I was their age.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp dry Italian seasoning (you can use dry oregano or thyme)
- ½ tsp pepper
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk (I used ½ cup milk + ½ plain Greek yogurt)
- ½ cup sunflower oil
- 1 cup cottage cheese (or any other white cheese, like crumbled feta)
- ¾ cup diced smoked ham (or cooked, crumbled bacon)
- ½ cup diced pickles
- ⅓ cup diced banana peppers or pepperoncini
- Preheat the oven to 400F.
- Grease 18x9 Pyrex baking dish.
- In a large bowl combine both flours, baking powder, salt, Italian seasonings, and pepper.
- In a medium bowl whisk eggs, and add buttermilk and oil.
- Stir to combine.
- Whisk in cottage cheese, ham, pickles, and peppers.
- The dough will be runny, thicker than pancake batter, but looser than bread dough.
- Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish.
- Bake 30-40 minutes until golden brown.
- Allow it to cool in the baking dish and serve warm or at room temperature with plain yogurt or cold beer.
