turkish pide

I was watching Shane Delia’s Spice Journey through Turkey the other night and he made a turkish pide in a regular oven. No matter how much effort I make with dough and heating, pizzas or pide made in a normal oven never turn out as well as ones made in a proper pizza oven. I think I have found the reason. In the program, he heated his pizza stone in the oven for one HOUR. I’ve never heated mine for this long. But I was making bread and so I decided to save a piece of dough and cook it as a pide after the cooking of the bread, thus using the heat that had already been generated. The oven and the pizza stone were scorchingly hot, just what was needed. Not surprisingly it turned out crispier than any pizza I’ve made before.

The vegetarian pide at my local Turkish restaurant has cheese, eggs and parsley in it, so I haven’t eaten it since becoming a vegan and I really miss it. But there’s no real reason why you can’t put anything into a pide. I put what I happened to have in the fridge, which was a tiny bit of left over Daiya cheese and some roasted leeks and pumpkin. I mixed these with parsley, garlic oil and lemon zest and stuffed them into the dough.

Delicious! I know I’ll be making this again, and I’ll be making my italian pizza with a scorchingly hot stone too.