[Music]
we're gonna cook simit!
[Music]
and this girl when she was much younger
was the first person
to ever cook simit on tv, on national tv
and at the time if you googled if you
went to youtube
you wouldn't find the simit recipe she
made it
simit is a very common street food in
Turkey
the rich people love it the poor people
love it and it's the cheapest thing that
you can fill your stomach with
but it's an incredible taste it's
crunchy
the sesame seeds pop in your mouth the
molasses
around that gives an extra crunchiness
and an incredible taste
it's great with a bit of cheese it's
great with
melon it's great with everything
basically and
simit is like the bagel of Turkey and
everyone loves it, even the seagulls so
when i teach you how to do it you're
gonna be able to make this incredible
goodness at home
[Applause]
I'm going to start by turning my oven
into a stone oven
stone bottom why the stone stores the
heat
and the bottom or whatever you cook have
this like
sound and it's crunchier so to turn it
into a stone oven these are called
ateş tuğlası
which is like fire bricks like you can
buy it in
your local shops maybe if you don't have
it we have the
Refika'dan store you can buy them on Etsy
if you like and
maybe in Amazon as well i'm not sure i
put the oven into
280 degrees and also
top bottom and fun on this is the
highest this oven gets
why do I do this I want the bricks
to get all the heat as possible first we
make the dough
for the dough we have one kilogram you
can do it from
half but while you make simit you're
gonna love it so much
why not have like nine or ten of them so
that
you'll be satisfied huh
this meat needs a strong flour which
means the proteins if it's
above 13 it's better for example I
wasn't able to find
13 protein I found 11 and a half so
if you cannot find like something over
13 you can use bread flour
not the all-purpose one use bread flour
that will be higher in the percentage
so I add a tablespoon
of salt by the way guys, my salt is
always powder
but I grind it with a grinder almost
every day
the taste becomes very very different
don't buy salt
which is already like a powder actually
good salt
with no additives gets cluttered and for
it to not to get cluttered
some additives are put we don't like
that as well so
buy rock salt and grind it day by day i
make a hole
in the middle for the water and for the
water it's around
60 600 milliliters off
liquid this is room temperature
and i'm gonna warm it up
check it with my finger this is like
when you put your finger it has to be a
little warmer
than your own self 39 degrees would be
very nice
and i'm going to put ordinary heap
teaspoon of
yeast don't you add sugar to that for
Simit, no
because i don't want it to pop up extra
why we want like stiff and strong
but we want the yeast so that we like
the flavor
seem it is not fluffy, simit is
like i'm gonna be at the end of the
summer
i'm pouring the mixture and slowly
mixing it up like this i don't put my
hands into it because
when it's this sticky it becomes a mess
okay it's no more very sticky what i'm
gonna do
is get the mixture to the counter
and work the dough it's still warm we
are waking up the gluten we are waking
up the yeast
the pressure that we put on the dough
becomes
the pressure that she's gonna give you
back while you're trying to rip your
simit so this is gonna take for almost
five minutes
i'm gonna do it with the palm of my hand
push the dough to one side then to the
other side then to the other side
the dough will collect everything around
it
even the ones in my fingers and i'm
gonna continue doing this until
that clean picture comes to the counter
so this is quite a hard dough and it's
done
with this flawless surface in eight
nine minutes almost now she's going to
rest
for about half an hour i'm gonna dust
the bottom
put my dough i have the damp cloth I
have some water
I even wet it more and put it like this
and she's gonna rest in a warm place
when there's where there's no wind
the marble counters no - we want either
wood or it could be up on a stove top
like this
this is going to rest for about half an
hour and that's all we need
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and here you can see Bahar Kitapçı having
her
afternoon coffee what a nice life she
has. while we wait for the dough to rise
i want to tell you the story of simit
how it was first discovered
in the time of Süleyman the magnificent
around
16th century there was one of his right
hands and he was called
Şemsi Paşa and this guy he was really
obsessive kind of guy he liked his work
and to relax
time to time he went into the kitchen of
the palace Topkapı Palace kitchen is
probably the world's first fusion
cuisine incredible
i want to tell you that in some other
episodes but what he did one day
he was angry and he got into the kitchen
and he made this
round shaped thing empty in the middle
and put some
seeds around and everyone loved it
and then the palace started to make it
as a regular dish
and around 90 years it became so famous
there were
special simit bakeries and for the other
bakeries to make simit was forbidden so
that this artisanship wouldn't get
ruined and i believe this is really
important because unfortunately now
those rules do not apply and this
Şemsi Paşa
is the inventor and on the other hand
there's another pasha which is very well
known as well he's called Sokullu
Mehmet Paşa
had his like mosque and library made
under his name by Mimar Sinan this
Şemsi Paşa goes to his
külliye and there was bird poops
everywhere and
he goes and tells to the Sokullu, i went
to your külliye and there was bird poop
everywhere and Sokullu says if you have a
place where
everyone comes prays works
and you are the reason why it's built
of course birds are gonna fly and
they're gonna shit, but the
hard thing is to create such a thing so
he gets very pissed off
and he goes to Sinan which is this
famous architect
and says that i want a mosque
where no birds can fly on top Sinan goes
around
and finds a place it's just at the exit
of Bosphorus which is Üsküdar
which is very close to where we live
where my atelier is
because it's like the corner of the
Bosphorus the winds cross
so in some places birds don't fly so he
makes the mosque
there with the small library which still
exists by now
and he has his Külliye well but the
funny thing
this guy who has a problem with the
birds also is the inventor
of simit, which is now probably even
more than the fish
is the main food source of seagulls
and many of the birds if you cross
Bosphorus from one side to another
you probably get a tea you also get your
simits
if you are very hungry you also get one
cheese
and you eat them together and
also you share it with the animals you
throw it from the boat
and the seagulls are gonna follow you
one after another and they'll eat
together with you
the funny thing is this guy is the
inventor of simit
and he has this problem with seagulls
but seagulls are also
his best admirer so this is the story of
how simit was invented
after that 90 years İstanbul was full of
simit places and the whole Turkey
loved simit and everyone who comes to
Turkey loves simits
i hope you make it at home and you also
like it
now we can move on to making the rest of
the simit
here we go the dough has risen
but we're gonna make it smaller again
from this i'm going to have 12 equal
lumps if you cut one very big one very
small
add to one another it should be around
130 grams
what i do i'm also gonna cut this from
the middle
like that i knit with my palms and all
my weight
and then slowly i feel it as if under my
hands they are really
in shape and what i do i slowly
remove the pressure i have then just use
my
small finger and the thumb and shape it
in a round shape like that
so that it becomes even and round
all my lumps are ready i go to my oven
my
stones are really hot i'll show you how
hot they are
i'm going to lower the heat to 230
degrees
remove the fan so that it doesn't like
get very dry and crunchy
now we make the gist of it and it's the
crunchiness
and the taste and it's created by
molasses what is molasses
is acidity taken off some kind of fruit
and boiled for a while for example this
is
mulberry molasses it's a cup of molasses
and to that i'm gonna add half a glass
of water
for it to be thickened a tablespoon of
flour
i have to mix it really well first
station is ready
and the second station i'm gonna use
this oven tray
i have sesame seeds which are roasted
if you don't have roasted sesame seeds
you can roast them yourselves
just lay it like this after i put my
simit to the molasses i'm going to
dip it to here
first of all i get the first couple out
and then what i'm gonna do
i'm gonna make two strings and it should
be around to 40-45
centimeters at least open it and
let it sit let's do the second one you
first start
from the middle don't hesitate to press
if it becomes dry you can use water
but if it's too much the water will ruin
everything
so just use it if your dough really gets
dry
so two long strings like that what you
do is press
from the beginning and then
let it turn like this
you can do it this way you can just do
it by hand and
to finish it up just
mix the sides here you have
the bases of the simit and it has to
mature a bit so
put some flour and let it sit
and until you make 12 of them it's gonna
raise that's all the rising we need
[Music]
with the team effort we have done all
these
first i'm gonna dip this in here
and then take it off
and put it in
the tray flip it
and then shape it if you want with your
hands
and it's ready here we go this is
simit ready to go to the oven because
this is gonna probably be your first
time doing it
don't be adventurous throw it one by one
but don't
open the oven for too long what i'm
gonna do just like
push it fast and just move it this will
cook around
15 to 20 minutes in the oven and it will
be
[Music]
great
we have all the simits of the world now
because of the molasses wets the sesame
seeds there are some chunks that are
collected it's better to get rid of them
when you first
take the simit out of the oven which
these are like that
it's going to be soft so we have to wait
for a while
until the simit becomes crunchier
actually the colder the better
why did you put that on the stick
because on the streets
they sell it on a big stick so i want to
show you
this is a rather smaller one
so look at this wow
and taste it how do you eat it together
with olives of course like cheese
and cream cheese
then on the boat you get one
triangular cheese like this you get your
[Music]
tea
so what does the oven stone do
it does this the crunchy bottom
and the crunchy outside
so this is this is just real celebration
i like to tear apart layers open it like
this
make some şamandıra
for example when i was working in the
hospital working there was upsetting my
stomach so i wasn't able to eat
anything these times what i like eating
was a bit of simit
i would like to add something when you
cook this much
you can freeze it and then whenever you
want to eat it just take it out and
toast it
when i used to live in Spain i used to
carry like
dozens with me and then put them in the
fridge and every weekend
ate one put it in toaster and the black
olives are so good they are high in
umami they
go out with a lot of things and for this
simit what you can do
is just plain or you can like slice it
from the middle
make a sandwich or falafel we have the
falafel
or you can like start cooking it on a
pan
and break an egg in the middle and make
like a perfect
toasted bread with a bit of maybe some
meat perfect anyways
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