Poğaça #BreadBakers

Happy Mother’s Day— Everyday should be Mother’s Day

Poğaça are cheese and herb filled Turkish savoury bread or pastries. Bread if you’ve used yeast to make the dough and pastry if you’ve used baking powder or baking soda as the leavening agent. I wasn’t exactly planning on making this famous Turkish breakfast bread/pastry as my hunt on the wide web world was for flower shaped breads. Found quite a few, some simple and some complicated. It was during my search that my eyes fell on this beautiful shaped bread. It was a potato filled poğaça (pronounced as poh-ah-cha). This led to my research for this delicious Turkish breakfast or tea treat and got to know that the original usually has a cheese and herb filling. Poğaça can be shaped the way you want, simple like pies, or as roses (my were disastrous after baking), squares, rounds well basically any shape you want as long as it has a cheese herb filling.

You must be wondering why I was searching for flower shaped breads and not any particular bread type recipe. Well, for the month of May fellow baker at Bread Bakers group, Julie Menghini, blogger at Hostess At Heart suggested we bake Mom’s Day or Flower bread. Julie has put together Spring Inspiration, 72 spring inspired recipes, spring craft , spring beauty, spring decor, spring party ideas and spring gardening tips.Check her blog out. Am sure you’ll find something that you’ll be interested in. I was left oogling and drooling at the spring recipes.

For Mother’s Day, as a food blogger I wanted to make something that my mum loved. Frankly she was not a bread person at all. When she fell sick and couldn’t do much in the kitchen, she would grumble away if my sister in law would give her toast and tea for breakfast, she would want her roti or paratha. So I really couldn’t think of a bread that she would have loved.  As a tribute to all the beautiful, hardworking, strong, selfless,considerate, loving, caring super heroes aka Mothers, Moms, Mamas, Mas, Mums I decided to bake flower shaped bread.

Poğaça are made into dainty bite size pastries or are chunky. Served usually with Turkish tea for breakfast or tea, they are filled with Turkish white cheese, herbs, olives or can be filled with potatoes or with minced meat.You can warm them under the broiler or grill as warm ones taste the best. They are usually topped with sesame seeds or nigella seeds.

 Wishing my fellow bakers, readers and followers a Happy Mother’s Day.

Poğaça – Turkish Savoury Pastry
Makes 12
Recipe source: Ozlem’s Turkish Table

For the dough:
3 cups plain flour (all purpose flour)
2¼ tsp instant active dry yeast
½ cup thick plain yogurt, at room temperature
1 egg, beaten
½ cup mild olive oil or sunflower oil
½ cup warm milk
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Filling:
1-1¼ cup Turkish white cheese, or feta or any soft white cheese (crumbled)
½ cup finely chopped fresh parsley
⅓ cup chopped olives

Topping:
1 egg yolk beaten or 2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp black or white sesame seeds or nigella seeds

extra oil for greasing
extra flour for dusting

Preparation of the dough:

1. Mix flour, yeast, salt and sugar in a big bowl.
2. Mix yogurt, milk, oil and beaten egg together.
3. Add the liquid mixture to the flour.
4. Bring the flour together into a dough.
5. Tip the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface.
6. Knead the dough till it is smooth and silky.
7. Shape the dough into a ball.
8. Grease the bowl with oil. Put the dough into the bowl.
9. Rub oil over the dough and cover with a tea towel or cling film and let it rise for an hour or till it is double the size.