Ramazan Pidesi

In the last hour before the evening call to prayer in Ramadan, an Istanbul neighborhood bakery sends out Ramazan pidesi in batches timed to the sunset, and the queue at the door lengthens with every tray. The loaf is a wide disc with a raised rim, and from a wood-fired oven it smells of smoke, toasted sesame and the faint raw-onion sharpness of nigella seed. Steam fogs the paper bag within a minute. The crust is thin and blistered and crackles when it is torn; the crumb underneath is open and slightly stretchy. The loaves from the last tray are the ones the line is waiting for, and they are too hot to bag.

The dough is water, flour, yeast and salt, mixed wetter and softer than everyday bread dough. After proofing, the baker pushes it out into the disc and presses the surface with fingertips (tırnaklama, nail-marking) in a grid or diamond. The pits keep the soft dough from ballooning into a pillow in the oven and hold the wash: a thin paste of flour and water called şifa gives a matte golden skin, while egg yolk loosened with water gives a lacquered one. Pressed too shallow, the grid disappears and the loaf puffs into a dome with a hollow underside. Underproofed dough bakes into a tight, bready crumb. A loaf bought at noon has gone leathery by the time the fast breaks.

At the table the loaf is torn or cut into wedges and split along the soft inner face, so that a bread layer closes around a filling and the wedge becomes a sandwich. A slice of kaşar or white cheese goes in first, because the hot crumb softens it within a minute, and a few olives follow. Fried sucuk rounds leave a red, spiced oil in the crumb that the bread soaks up. One or two slices of Kastamonu pastırma tucked into a warm loaf make a third version, the cured beef fat loosening against the steam. The first bite is warm bread, then salt, then the dense chew of the filling.

The iftar order usually opens with dates and olives and a bowl of soup, and the pide arrives while it is still warm enough to steam when it is opened. Bakeries bake again for sahur, the meal before dawn, so a second round of loaves comes out in the small hours and goes around cheese and olives once more. The month sets the rhythm of the whole trade: bakers are hired just for Ramadan, and those from Kastamonu, Safranbolu and Trabzon are the ones most sought after to work the dough.

Patterns shift with the city and the baker. In large cities a diamond or baklava lattice is common, often stamped with a simple tool to keep up with the line, and in parts of Anatolia the same loaf goes by the name tırnaklı ekmek. Some bakers use only sesame, some use only nigella, and plenty use both over a plain egg-washed top. Some loaves are baked with egg and some without, and some carry the nail-marked grid while others are stamped or left plain.

Origin and history

Istanbul's pide culture took shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the loaf was already a bakers' trade of its own by then. A Bursa market regulation of 1502 set the flour for pide purer and more finely sifted than bread flour, asked for a generous covering of poppy seed and a crisp bake, and fixed the weight of each kind.

The Ramadan loaf grew out of that trade and a habit of waiting. In the Ottoman period households queued at the bakery for the special pide even when it meant breaking the fast late, and many carried their own fresh egg, nigella and sesame to be baked onto it. Bakers aimed to finish about two hours before iftar so the trays could go out to the neighborhood warm.

In the seventeenth century, Istanbul's Ramadan pide, as Evliya Çelebi saw it, was made of white flour and carried nigella, almond, saffron or poppy seed on top; anise versions are also mentioned. Of those toppings the bakery counter today keeps sesame and nigella, and the almond and saffron loaves have dropped out.