I’ve been wanting to cook Turkish Pide for a long time. Actually, this is an interesting sort of boat-shaped Turkish pizza. The classical filling is with minced meat and vegetables, but I’ve seen pide with yellow cheese, eggs, different cheeses or spinach filling.
We really liked these Turkish pizzas and the children didn’t have anything to say against the vegetables in the filling, which is a great plus! The dough is soft and delicious, easy to cook and you can mold it into shapes with your children. And at the end, you all get to enjoy the Turkish pide – they are worth a try, they are truly interesting and delicious.
First, you prepare the dough:
- In a big bowl, put the warm water, add the dried yeast and the sugar and let it there for 10 minutes until you can see a foam above.
- In a bigger bowl, mix very well: the yoghurt, the egg white (we will use the yolk later), 1 spoonful of salt and the melted butter.
- Add the composition with yeast from step 1 and mix everything again.
- Now add the flour, not all at once, 500-600g at first.
- Mix with a spoon and, if the dough is too wet, you gradually add the rest of the flour – you might even need a bit more than 750 g. It depends on the type of flour you use.
- Take the dough out of the bowl, put on the table and knead with your hands until it becomes compact, not sticky and firm.
- Then put the dough back in the bowl, cover it with a cloth and leave for an hour to rise.
Meanwhile, you prepare the filling:
-You can use the meat grinder for the meat, or you can use a knife to cut it in small pieces.
-Chop the onion, the bell pepper, the tomatoes and the parsley. Add them to the meat.
- Add 1 spoonful of salt, the spices and mix well with your hands.
We shape the pide.
When the dough is ready, divide it in 6 equal portions and make 6 balls.
Leave them on the table for 10 minutes.
Take one ball and spread it on the table with your hands until you get a long and thin oval shape.
Sprinkle some flour on the table if you need.
Use the rolling pin to make a bigger oval: approximately 3-4 mm thick and as long as the oven pan you are going to use.
Some ovens come with a pan. If you are using that, I recommend you to consider the longest side of the oven pan for the best pide shape.
Place the oval shape in the pan, lined with baking paper, adjust it and, on top of it, put 1/6 of the filling we prepared earlier.
Use a spoon to spread it equally on the whole surface. If you look at the picture, you will see that the layer of filling is not too thick.
Then bring the lateral edges a little bit above the filling, approximately 1-1.5cm above.
I recommend to start in the middle and carefully move towards the ends.
When you reach the ends, try to form sharp angles, so that you get beautiful boat-shaped pizzas.
In a big oven pan you can put 2 long Turkish pizzas at the same time, so you will have to cook everything in 3 rounds.
When the first 2 pide are in the pan, grease the dough with yolk (only the dough, not the filling!). Put the pide in the preheated oven to 200 degrees C. Keep them there for 25 minutes.
When they get nice and brown, take them out of the oven and add some grated yellow cheese over the filling and put them back in the oven for no longer than 2-3 minutes, only for the cheese to melt.
Do the same with all the other pide.
Then, enjoy them with your family. At first, I was a bit sceptic, thinking the kids will not accept the vegetables in the filling, but they really did not have anything to say against.
Enjoy!