My mom's spanakópita - the real one, with homemade dough!!

With this holiday blog, I wanted to introduce the Zelos community to my mom's spanakopita recipe. Christmas has always been a very important holiday for my family. I've been living abroad for many years, as has my only sister. At Christmas, we used to all meet at my parents' home in Greece and spent endless hours cooking, sharing and spending time together. Soon after I started Zelos, my sister and her family visited us in Cincinnati (that's her on the right!) and we decided to honor our mom by making her legendary spanakópita from scratch, dough included! We even filled one small corner just with cheese, because one of our kids doesn't like spinach, exactly like our grandmother used to do for us. I hope you will enjoy our family treasure and that you, too, will try it - it will not disappoint you!

Ingredients for homemade greek spanakopita

For the dough

1 1/3 c sparkling water

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 stick butter

1 tsp salt

For the filling

1 lb frozen whole-leaf spinach

a bunch of scallions sliced

1/2 cup fresh dill

1/2 cup flat leaf parsley

12 oz crumbled feta

1/4 cup half-and-half

3 eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

How to make homemade greek spanakopita

Prepare the dough

Slice the butter and put in a bowl with the flour. Slowly add the sparkling water and knead the dough until it’s smooth. Roll it into a ball and wrap with plastic, chilling in the fridge for two hours.

Prepare the filling 

Thaw the spinach and squeeze out the excess water. Mix in a bowl the spinach, scallions, herbs, feta, half-and-half and the eggs. Add pepper to taste (you probably won’t need salt because of the feta). Set aside.

Put it all together!

Warm your oven to 400F.

Divide the dough in two and roll out the first ball with a rolling pin to just larger than the size of a 9x12 baking dish.

Brush the dish with some olive oil and lay the first sheet of dough in the pan, leaving a little extending up the sides of the dish.

Add your filling and distribute evenly.

Roll out the second ball of dough and lay it over the filling, pinching the edges of the two layers to make a nice edge.

Using a sharp knife, cut your spanakópita in square pieces and brush with some olive oil.

Place in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 50 minute to an hour until the spanakopita is golden. Serve it warm or cold, it is equally yummy!

PS We didn't use salt in the filling because the feta can be very salty; if you are using a different type of cheese, you might want to add a touch of salt to your filling.

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