Pide: A South Pond Variation on a Turkish Theme

Chef McKenna and I were bantering around menu ideas for our farm house suppers and we lingered on different types of bread and dessert offerings. Focaccia bread, pizza, flat breads, savoury and fruit pies and our favourite variations on this theme. What are the differences between all of these things, where do they originate? I love our pizza’s, just plain with fresh tomatoes and Bella Cassara fresh mozzarella and traditional fruit pies but I was open to suggestion.

He suggested trying out Pide’s (pronounced pea-day). I confess that I did not know what a Pide was. I hadn’t even heard of them and didn’t know what they tasted like. I was intrigued about a new experience. Chef McKenna whipped up a batch for a tasting – my favourite time of day. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I did a sneak google search beforehand to at least know what I was going to eat and found the following:

“Pide is a flat bread baked with toppings in a stone oven. Pide and its various varieties are wide spread through Turkey and are established as an important food. The base is a flat-bread of a similar style to pita, chapati, or western pizza crust.” *

I had originally wanted to make a galette either sweet or savoury, which is more of a pie crust shaped in a circle but with a centre opening revealing the contents. I liked the idea of the pizza crust since it would not contain butter and there were more opportunities to use different grain flours.

The Pide was honestly delicious. The thin crust light and airy and the balance of flavour from the filling was a perfect ratio. It can be made in the oven, in a stone oven, on the barbecue, pretty well anywhere. It is a great way to profile special or seasonal ingredients and there is really no limit to what you can put inside as fillings. It will be a feature on our menus.

http://sirkecirestaurants.com/what-is-pide-turkish-flatbread-sirkeci-restaurants-istanbul/
Date accessed: April 28, 2017
2017 by Louis Herman restaurant review