How to make Easy Petulla Recipe (Soft Fried Dough)

Welcome to another Albanian Balkan recipe. Let me show you how to make petulla. On today’s recipe, we are making petulla, which is pretty much fried dough, and the closest you can get to an American recipe is donuts.

Now you might ask what’s the main difference? Well, the difference is that donuts usually rely more on the sweet side, whereas petulla rely more on the savory side. Now of course you can eat them with sweet stuff, such as jam. With jams you can make a perfect combination of sweet and savory. And if you want them all the way sweet, try my crème brûlée donuts. They are a derivative of petulla, filled with pastry cream and dipped in caramel.

If there is an Albanian standard for breakfast, this is it. I have been eating petulla for my whole life, and I can say that the simple flavor they have is incomparable to any other fried dough recipe. If you like Albanian breakfasts, my trahana is another one.

To make petulla we are only going to need 4 ingredients: flour, water, yeast and salt, plus oil to fry them in. It’s going to be an easy recipe, so with that said, let’s grab all the ingredients and start making petulla. If you like videos better, here is my video.

How much water?

As I have mentioned before, we usually never know how much water a flour needs. Depending on the environment, depending on the humidity, sometimes it might need more and sometimes it might need less. It’s the same with my byrek dough. It depends on how thirsty the flour is. That’s why the water in this recipe is a range.

Why do we rest the dough for petulla?

This dough goes in the fridge overnight. Now this part might be confusing. The traditional recipe usually calls for the dough to be cooked right away, not stored in the fridge overnight. So naturally you might be asking why are we storing the dough in the fridge overnight?

The reason why we are doing so is because, different from a traditional recipe which calls for 2 teaspoons of yeast, we are only using half a teaspoon of yeast. When we put the dough overnight in the fridge, what this is gonna do is that it’s going to ferment the dough. This is going to give a special taste and also give that little bit of yeast the time it needs to work. I personally do not prefer the taste of yeast. That’s why I like the fermentation recipe better.

What to eat petulla with

Here is the list of things I usually like to eat them with: feta cheese, fig jam, strawberry jam, honey, sugar and peach jam. Sour cream works too, or just eat them as they are.

Here is another recipe you would love, if you like petulla: How to make Baklava Recipe from Scratch