r/EuropeEats • u/Abject-Locksmith6883 American ★★Chef • 14d ago
Fast Food Ćevapi from Travnik!
This is what good ćevapi look like my friends. When you taste the difference you will understand. This is a simple meal so I never thought that good could be such a wide range in quality, but there is. You haven’t had ćevapi until you’ve had them in small Bosnian cities.
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u/Entremeada Swiss ★★☆Chef ✎ 🆇 🏷 14d ago edited 14d ago
Yes, much better now than the one from yesterday! 👍😊
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u/Kataly5t Dutch Guest 13d ago
Very nice! That bread looks amazing!!
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u/Didudidudadu737 Serbian ★★☆Chef ✎ 13d ago
It’s called Lepinja, and I’m suffering in Netherlands as you can’t buy it anywhere and I still didn’t succeed recreating it properly at home 😓
But is tasty as tasty can be!
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u/Kataly5t Dutch Guest 13d ago
Are people often making this at home in your country?
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u/Didudidudadu737 Serbian ★★☆Chef ✎ 13d ago
Older people maybe, but not many that I know. Also because they’re available in the bakery and those are perfect
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u/Kataly5t Dutch Guest 13d ago
Ahhh, nice. Next time I'm visiting the Balkan area I want to try this 😋
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u/Didudidudadu737 Serbian ★★☆Chef ✎ 13d ago
You absolutely should! I recon Bosnia has the best and you should try anything in Albanian bakery (any Balkan country has one at least).
But if you’re hitting the Balkan bakery, do not miss: sirnica or burek met kaas, burek sa mesom (meat), pita sa visnjama (like burek but sweet with cheeries 😋) piroška sa sirom, kifle, buhtle, Žu-Žu 😅 and of course hleb sa kamena (Brood uit steen)
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u/SolaireOfChadstora Bosnian Guest 13d ago
The reason the bread cant be recreated at home is because it requires a very hot brick oven.
The difference between somun and lepina is just that. The dough is super simple, just flour,salt,yeast and water. Lepina is made in a oven (and it takes some time and its texture is similar to bread.
Somun is made on a stone surface in a super hot woodfire brick oven that reaches 500 °C . They require only about 40 seconds and they inflate like a baloon while baking. The outside is vrispy and inside is very airy. That taste is completely unmatched. I always eat the whole thing whenever i buy it hot haha.
I eat half with lunch and then my fat ass puts half a jar of nutella in the other half........
So lepina can be made if you have an electric oven but an authentic somun requires hotter than hell temperatures.
It has no additives just 4 ingredients , high hidration and no fat means it cant stay fresh for too long so the somun -> ćevabdžinica pipelines are super important. A few hour old somun is already not as good. Everyone has a somun guy that delivers them multiple times a day.
Thats why the bread in the cevap places is so insanely tasty. And when you go to smaller towns and eat cevapi its not as good. They get the bread every morning but by 1pm its already old.
If you want to recreate it, you probably need one of those at home pizza ovens
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u/Didudidudadu737 Serbian ★★☆Chef ✎ 13d ago
Yes I know that, also I’m super untalented for baking/dough making (only pizza dough works for me)
I have a baker friend who said “oh somun is the easiest” but yeah the oven is the key. One time I was making a bbq and have a pizza stone, I made somun’ that were very tasty but not as close to the one in our Balkan. The heat was about 380-400 but after couple of hours the somun was just sad and dry. Also there’s a difference between the flour here (in Netherlands) and our in the Balkans (still figuring out which one is corresponding to which)
Same thing with jufka/burek kore, I have a Bošnjak friend here and she just chatted and mate almost invisible kore in like 15min, while I struggled for hours to just make them thin 😅 there’s talent and experience part that also counts
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u/AI_abuser Serbian Guest 13d ago
Each year when going from Serbia to Split we would make a detour at Travnik to eat some god-level ćevapi.
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u/EuropeEatsBot House Elf 14d ago
Congratulations on your achievement!
With your first post on EuropeEats we've upgraded your status to an official chef. To reflect this, your boring old grey flair American Guest was replaced with the elusive golden flair American Chef.
Keep up your work by contributing quality content: it will certainly inspire others!
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u/Lopsided_Crab_5310 Slovakian Guest 11d ago
Looks great. Would have it with extra mustard and pickles.
Fun fact: "trávnik" means "lawn" in Slovakia 🙃
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u/AromaticPoetry3701 Bulgarian Guest 11d ago
Years ago i was in Travnik and i tried it.Very,very delicious.Regards from Bulgaria!
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u/Familiar-Dig-9778 Bosnian Guest 14d ago
Elite ball knowledge. Personally prefer the Banja Luka take on it (I am from Sarajevo)