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Khachapuri (Cheese Bread)

Name: Khachapuri (Cheese Bread)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: Georgian
Ingredients: 2.5 cups Flour; 0.75 cup Warm milk; 0.25 cup Water; 2 tsp Dry yeast; 1 tsp Sugar; 1 tsp Salt; 2 tbsp Olive oil; 1.5 cups Mozzarella; 1 cup Feta; 2 Eggs; 2 tbsp Butter

A boat of bread heaped with salty cheese and crowned with a runny egg and butter — Georgia's iconic Adjaruli khachapuri. Swirl the yolk, butter, and cheese together and tear off the bread to dip: as dramatic to look at as it is comforting to eat.

Steps

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm milk and water, rest 5 minutes, then knead in the flour, salt, and olive oil until smooth.
⏲ 10 min
Let the dough rise in a warm place about 1 hour, until doubled.
⏲ 60 min
Divide in two, roll each into an oval, then roll the long edges inward and pinch the ends to form a boat.
⏲ 5 min
Fill the hollow with the mixed mozzarella and feta and bake at 230C for 12-15 minutes.
⏲ 15 min
When golden and bubbling, make a well in the cheese, drop in a yolk on each, and bake 1-2 minutes more for a runny yolk.
⏲ 2 min
Top with a pat of butter. To eat, stir the yolk, butter, and cheese together and tear off pieces of bread to dip.

Variations

Imeruli: A round version filled with cheese, no egg.
Shortcut dough: Use store-bought pizza dough to skip the rise.
Cheese swap: No sulguni/imeruli? Use mozzarella and feta.
Add-ins: Mix ham or mushrooms into the cheese.

Tips

Blend mozzarella (for stretch) and feta (for salt) to mimic Georgian cheeses.
Add the yolks at the very end so they stay runny — overbaking sets them.
No dough? Store-bought pizza dough works great.
While hot, swirl the yolk, butter, and cheese into a sauce and dip the bread.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

Mozzarella-plus-feta is a good reconstruction, and it helps to know what it is standing in for. Sulguni is a pasta filata cheese — the same family as mozzarella, curd stretched in hot water and then brined — and imeruli is the young fresh cheese it is made from. So the substitution is not arbitrary: mozzarella brings the same stretch for the same structural reason, and feta supplies the brine's salt that sulguni carries and mozzarella does not. Dairy and heat sorts what each does under heat, and saganaki is the case where a cheese refuses to flow at all.
The yolk is cooked by the cheese, not by the oven. Those last one or two minutes are nominal; what actually sets the underside of the yolk is molten cheese well above 100°C, and it goes on doing it out of the oven. Which is why it is added at the very end and why the dish is stirred at the table rather than admired — a khachapuri that waits five minutes arrives with a set yolk. The reverse of onsen tamago, where the whole method exists to set a yolk on purpose while leaving the white loose.
The boat is structural. Rolling the long edges inward doubles the dough at the rim, so the walls stay bread while the base sits under liquid cheese — and a base under something wet cannot crisp, because a wet surface stalls at 100°C (browning). The rim is where the crust of this bread lives, and it is also the handle you tear off to dip.
230°C is the cheese's schedule, not the dough's. Most enriched breads bake cooler and longer; here the cheese has to melt and bubble before the base dries out, so the oven runs hot and the bake is twelve to fifteen minutes (what your oven is doing). Bake it at 180°C for longer and you get dry bread around cheese that has already released its fat.