Tiropita - Kourou (Κουρού) is the cheese pie made with kourou dough instead of phyllo: a crumbly, short pastry built around a feta-based filling. This is the key divergence from the standard pie and the reason it has its own entry. Where the phyllo version is about brittle stacked sheets, kourou is about a tender, sandy, biscuit-like crust, a completely different mouthfeel and a different set of things that can go wrong.
The dough is what defines it and it is made short on purpose. Kourou is a soft worked pastry, typically built with fat and often a dairy element like yogurt or butter, mixed only enough to come together so it bakes up crumbly and melting rather than flaky in layers. It is rolled or pressed around the cheese filling, feta cut with a milder cheese and bound with egg as in the standard pie, then shaped into individual pieces or a larger form and baked until the crust is set and lightly golden. Good execution is a crust that is tender and short, breaking cleanly with a soft sandy crumb, the inside cooked through and the cheese warm and creamy against it. Sloppy execution is dough that was overworked into something tough and bready, a pale underbaked base that stays raw and heavy, or a crust so fat-laden it bakes greasy and slumps; the texture failures here are about the dough, not about sheet separation, which is what sets the kourou problems apart from a phyllo pie's.
How it shifts tracks the dough formula and the shaping. Some makers build a richer, more crumbly kourou close to a shortcrust; others keep it firmer and more biscuit-like so it holds a portable shape better. The filling can stay plain feta or lean into a blend of cheeses for a milder, creamier center. The cheese pie as a whole, and specifically its phyllo-built form with its own layering discipline, is the benchmark this one diverges from and is its own subject; the breakfast-context and coiled versions are likewise distinct, and each deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. The test for kourou is its own: a short tender crust that breaks rather than flakes, baked through, with a warm contained cheese center.