Pide (Turkish Pizza)

What I cook when I want to EAT 🫦

Pide (otherwise known as Turkish pizza) is an absolute staple and guaranteed crowd-pleaser in my house! It’s essentially a piece of Turkish flatbread shaped into a long, boat-like base and most commonly filled with minced meat and cheese, but people also use vegetables, eggs or sujuk. It’s great because you can really customise the fillings to your liking.

In Australia, pide has become a part of the everyday food landscape, being sold in all kinds of Middle Eastern shops and even making it’s way into bakeries. I remember eating pide with my Dad on the way home from basketball games and feeling no shame about indulging until I was bursting at the seams.

It reminds me quite a lot of fatyre, which is a Lebanese dish that my dad would make using a recipe from my Grandma, or ‘Siti’, as we call her. Fatyre is a kind of savoury pie, often containing pine nuts in the mixture, which inspired me to add pine nuts to my pide recipe.

Once again, I wouldn’t say that my recipe is by any means authentic or traditional. The first time I made pide was with my sourdough starter, I wanted the dough to be fluffy and a bit crispy. I first tried it without the butter and milk, and whilst the dough was still tasty, it was a bit drier than I wanted. After the passing of my starter (RIP Betty), I decided to develop a recipe without it, and using butter and milk really made the difference! I have included the option for adding the starter if you want to make it more gut-friendly.

I hope you enjoy the recipe, please post pictures or let me know your thoughts! 🫶

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*For the pide pictured, I used feta instead of mozzarella and topped it with chopped parsley :)

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PIDE (Turkish Pizza)

Dough

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour

• 1 tbsp yeast

• ½ cup milk

• ½ cup warm water

• 2 tbsp melted butter

• 2 generous pinches of salt

• 1 tsp sugar

*If using sourdough starter, use 70g starter and only ¼ cup milk.

Steps

1. In your stand mixer bowl, combine the warm water, milk, yeast, sugar, and sourdough starter (if using). Let the yeast bloom for a couple of minutes.

2. Add all remaining ingredients to the yeast mixture.

3. Using the paddle attachment, mix on a low–medium speed for roughly 5 minutes, until a shaggy but well-shaped dough ball forms. Resist the urge to add extra flour!

4. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and set aside to rise somewhere warm for 1 hour. The dough should double in size.

5. Remove the wrap and drizzle a little EVOO around the edge of the dough. Stretch and fold the dough in the bowl, then coil-fold it to reform a dough ball.

6. Cover and repeat steps 4 and 5 once more.

7. After the second rise, gently turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.

8. Divide the dough evenly into 6 pieces. Feel free to make more smaller pieces or fewer larger ones, and don’t worry at all about them being perfectly even! Unless you’re a perfectionist 🙂

9. Knead the dough portions and shape them into smooth, rough balls. Place them on a lined baking tray, cover with wrap, and set aside to rise until doubled in size.

10. In the meantime, make your filling.

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Meat Filling

Ingredients

• 500g minced beef

• 500g minced lamb

• 1 white or yellow onion

• 1 handful of chopped parsley

• 1 tbsp paprika

• 1 tbsp cumin

• 1 tbsp ground coriander seed

• 1 tsp onion powder

• 1 tsp garlic powder

• 1 tsp minced garlic

• 2 tbsp cold water

• 2 tbsp EVOO

• 3 tbsp toasted pine nuts

• 1 tsp ground pepper

• Salt to taste (I used about 1 tsp)

• Cheese of your choice

Steps

1. Peel and grate the onion.

2. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

3. Wearing gloves (or not, if you enjoy touching meat!), use your hands to thoroughly work the mixture together until the meat, spices, and onion are very well combined. There should be no large chunks of mince.

4. Set aside until ready to assemble the pides.

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Assembly

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C and line 2–3 large baking trays with baking paper.

2. On a floured surface, place your dough balls. One at a time, roll each piece into a large oval shape, about ½ inch thick. Mine were roughly 6 inches long, but again, the size is completely up to you.

3. Pinch around the edges of the dough, creating a raised border about 2cm in, and lightly flatten the centre.

4. Take a handful of the meat mixture and evenly press it into the centre of the dough, making sure to leave the raised crust. Really press the meat into the dough.

5. Fold the edges of the dough slightly over the meat so it stays neatly enclosed.

6. Repeat steps 3–5 with the remaining dough balls.

7. Transfer the pides to your lined baking trays. At this stage, you can top them with cheese if you like — I personally love mozzarella, but they’re honestly amazing without cheese too.

8. Bake for 25–35 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown.

9. Slice or serve whole with lemon wedges and tzatziki, and my personal favourite — fattoush salad.