Spanish-Style Empanadillas Recipe - Dough Preparation

Spanish empanadillas are a smaller version of the traditional empanada - a bread-like crust that can accept a wide array of different savory fillings. While you'll need a knife-and-fork setup to enjoy an empanada, you can eat empanadillas with your hands, making them perfect meals to enjoy in any occasion.

This recipe illustrates the basic dough preparation based on the now-legendary recipe from my maternal grandmother.

Ingredients (6 servings)

• 4 cups of general purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1/2 cup of olive oil (can be substituted by a stick of butter)
• 1 cup of water
• 1 large egg

Preparation

Mixing the Empanadilla Dough

In a large bowl, combine the 4 cups of general purpose flour with the 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Once well mixed, add the 2 teaspoons of salt to the mix.

Mix in the half cup of olive oil. As a less-healthy alternative, you can combine a stick of butter with the flour mixture instead of using olive oil, ensuring that the butter is cut in a few small pieces at a time and combined with the flour before adding more, till the result acquires a slightly thicker density.

Add a small amount of water as you continue mixing and pressing the dough - you might end up needing less than a whole cup of water, especially if you used olive oil instead of butter.

The key is to achieve a balance where the dough stops being a powdery mix, and starts feeling like a consistent firm unit. (If you added too much water and ended up with a runny finish that remains too muddy in spite of continued mixing efforts, add some additional flour to the mix till the result thickens up consistently.)

Once the right consistency is reached - something similar to hard modeling clay - cover the dough with a cloth and let it rest for one hour, as you prepare the filling.

(Alternatively, you can let the empanadilla dough rest for a day or more in your fridge, as long as it's well-covered - you'd just need to let it warm up at room temperature one hour before use, which will soften it considerably, and using a knife to cut it in small segments is perfectly acceptable.)

Extending the Dough for Empanadillas

The traditional method to prepare the empanadilla dough is to get a small chunk or slice of the dough and stretch it with a roller pin, till the original short and thick mixture is turned into a resilient, even, thin layer. This will require multiple passes, flipping it in multiple directions. Also, be sure to cover your working surface with flour to prevent the dough from sticking.

However, manual pasta machines offer a simpler alternative to this, speeding up the preparation time. A lasagna-pasta setting will give you the kind of thin dough layers that you could use for your empanadilla.

I'd recommend preparing the empanadilla dough in thicker layers than typical lasagna layers (especially if your filling is rather runny) but keep in mind that the empanadilla dough would harden up considerably when cooked in the oven, acquiring a fresh-oven-baked loaf of bread consistency. If your dough ends up too thick, it'll take over the ratio of dough-to-filling, and could make the combination feel a tad bland.

Filling the Empanadillas

Spanish empanadillas vary in size - from almost bite-size morsels to a full meal that you'd grab with both hands, with the most typical size being smaller than a fist. (My grandmother's recipe erred on the bigger side, but you'd be definitely craving more than one serving of this goodness.)

The ideal starting point would use a circular piece of dough, where the filling would be placed in the center. Then it would be closed by folding it in half, and pressing the edges with a fork. A rectangular piece of dough would also work, although the empanadilla would not have the traditional, perfect half-circle shape.

Future blog posts will bring in more details on empanadilla filing recipes. Suffice to say that my grandmother's star recipe combined top-quality Spanish tuna in olive oil with tuna marinated in vinegar, plus a mix of natural and fried tomato.

At this point, you could freeze your ready-to-cook empanadillas for up to one month. They could go straight from the freezer to the next step.

Oven-Baking the Empanadillas

My grandmother's original recipe would use a decent amount of olive oil to fry them in a big, hot pan, then patting them dry on each side. However, the frying approach relies on a significant amount of quality olive oil, which might be expensive and not so easy to get out of Spain and other Mediterranean countries.

An easy, healthier alternative is to oven-bake the empanadillas. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a tray with parchment paper and space the empanadillas evenly, giving them some breathing room.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg, and use it to cover the surface of the empanadillas with a light coat. This will give them a golden finish.

Cook the empanadillas for 20 minutes on one side. Then flip them and continue cooking on the other side for an additional 20 minutes. They will be done once the crust is golden and has bread-like consistency.

Enjoy!