Fatayer Jibneh (فطاير جبنة) is the cheese version of the Lebanese filled pastry: a thin bread dough closed around a soft white cheese, usually akkawi or a blend, and baked. The angle is the cheese itself and the salt-and-melt problem it brings. Akkawi is a brined cheese that runs salty and, untreated, can leach water and turn the dough damp from the inside. So the build is really about managing one ingredient: soaking or rinsing the cheese to pull down the salt, draining it so it does not flood the pastry, and sometimes cutting it with a milder cheese for a cleaner melt. Get that right and the result is a tender shell over a soft, gently salty, faintly stretchy center. Get it wrong and it is either aggressively salty or a soggy parcel with a watery pool where the cheese gave out.
The build is dough, prepared cheese, and a fold chosen to suit a filling that softens and spreads as it heats. The dough is the same soft, lightly oiled bread dough used across the fatayer family, rolled thin and rested so it does not tear. The cheese is rinsed or briefly soaked to temper the brine, drained well, sometimes shredded or crumbled and blended with a milder white cheese, occasionally with a little egg or nigella seed and parsley worked through. Because cheese liquefies and seeks any gap, these are most often shaped as open boats or half-moons rather than fully sealed triangles, which lets steam escape and keeps a seam from bursting under pressure. They are brushed with oil or egg and baked until the dough sets and just colors and the cheese is molten but not scorched. A good fatayer jibneh shows a thin, lightly browned crust, a soft center with a short pull, and a clean balance where the salt reads as seasoning rather than a slap. A sloppy one is soggy-bottomed, sharply salty, or baked until the cheese has split and gone oily and rubbery.
It varies first by the cheese. Akkawi is the standard, but kitchens reach for halloumi for more chew, kashkaval for sharpness, or a blend of white cheeses for a smoother, milder melt, and many fold in nigella seed, mint, or parsley for aroma. The shape shifts between open boat, sealed triangle, and a larger flatbread round that edges toward a cheese manoushe. The dough can be the standard bread dough or a richer one closer to a brioche. Each of those, the larger cheese flatbread especially, is a recognizable form in its own right and deserves its own treatment rather than a footnote here. They all return to the same idea: a thin dough sealed around tempered cheese and baked, judged on whether the salt and the moisture were brought to heel.