Khachapuri

The technique first: khachapuri’s signature moment isn’t the baking, it’s the finish — the loaf goes back into a very hot oven twice: once to set the dough and melt the cheese, and again, after a raw egg is cracked into the hollowed center, just long enough to set the white while leaving the yolk to be stirred in tableside with butter.

History

Khachapuri is Georgia’s iconic cheese bread, a leavened dough filled with melted local cheeses and baked until the crust turns golden. Every Georgian region claims its own shape and its own filling, from Imereti’s round, closed version to Adjara’s open, boat-shaped one.

Adjarian khachapuri, shaped like a boat, stands out for its central well where a raw egg is cracked and a knob of butter placed just before serving: the diner then mixes the yolk, the melting butter and the still-hot cheese with a piece of crust themselves, in a gesture that has become as much a ritual as a way of eating.

Ingredients — serves 4

• 500 g (17.5 oz) flour
• 10 g (2¼ tsp) baker’s yeast
• 250 ml (1 cup) warm milk
• 400 g (14 oz) sulguni cheese, or a mozzarella-feta blend
• 4 eggs
• 50 g (3½ tbsp) butter
• Salt, a pinch of sugar

Step-by-step khachapuri recipe

1. Prepare a leavened dough with the flour, yeast, warm milk, salt and sugar, then let it rise for about 1 hour.
2. Divide the dough and roll it into an oval, then fold the edges to form a boat shape.
3. Fill the center with grated, mixed cheese.
4. Bake in a hot oven until the dough is golden and the cheese has melted, about 15 minutes.
5. Remove the khachapuri, gently hollow out the hot center and crack a raw egg into it.
6. Return it to the oven briefly for the white to set, then add a knob of butter before serving immediately.

Cooking method

Technique: baking in a very hot oven to sear the dough while keeping the cheese melting, raw egg added right at the end of cooking.

Traditional equipment: traditional bread oven (tone), or a home oven failing that.

Tips: the egg white should be set but the yolk still runny when served.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided by four servings.

A full loaf of enriched dough carrying 400 g of melted cheese and finished with butter and egg makes khachapuri one of the richest entries in this atlas by the serving: 945 kcal, with cheese driving most of the 23 g of saturated fat and the dough itself supplying the bulk of the 103 g of carbohydrate.

Economic context

Georgia has no entry in the World Bank Food Prices for Nutrition dataset, so the regional average for Europe & Central Asia is used here instead, as an explicitly labeled estimate. Khachapuri itself, built from flour, milk and cheese, is inexpensive everyday food in Georgia — sold on nearly every street corner rather than reserved for special occasions.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. Georgia is not covered by the country-level dataset; the Europe & Central Asia regional average is shown instead. This figure is not a costing of this specific recipe.

Who this dish suits

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