SİMİT RECIPE 🤩 How to Make Simit at Home | #1 Turkish Street Food

What are we cooking? We're gonna cook simit. 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 this 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 pops 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. I'm gonna start by turning my oven into a stone oven, a stone bottom. Why? The stone stores the heat and the bottom of 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 fan 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. The simit 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 11.5 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 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 of 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 gonna put ordinary heap teaspoon of yeast. For the 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. Simit is not fluffy. Simit is like I'm gonna be at the end of 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. 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 gonna 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 where there's no wind. The marble counters, no. We want either wood or it could be up on a stove top like this. She's gonna rest for about half an hour and that's all we need. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, you can subscribe to our channel. If you haven't liked the video or if you haven't commented so far for the video, please do it so that the goodness spreads and here you can see Bahar after 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's 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 in 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 paşa which is very well known as well. He's called Sokullu Mehmet Paşa. Sokullu had his like mosque and library made under his name by Mimar Sinan. This Şemsi Paşa goes to his külliye and there was bird poos everywhere. And he goes and tells to the sultan, I went to your külliye and there was bird poo 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 ----. 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 as 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, Istanbul was full of simit place and the whole Turkey loved simit and everyone who comes to Turkey loves simit. 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. Each 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 gonna 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 simit 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 yourself. Just lay it like this. After I put my simit to the molasses, I'm gonna 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 basis 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. 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 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. How do you eat it together? Of course, cheese and cream cheese. Then on the boat, you get one triangular cheese like this. You get your tea and get your simit. So, what does the ovenstone do? It does this. The crunchy bottom and the crunchy outside. Because of the pandemic, we haven't been eating simit from outside. So, this is this is a real celebration. I like to tear apart layers, open it like this, make some shamanzira, some cheese. 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 liked eating was a 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're high in umami. It's going well with a lot of things and for this simit, what you can do is 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, so that's it guys. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe. That's how you can share us with the world. If you like the video, press like and share just a little bit comment because this is how the algorithm gets us, knows us, share us, spread us. Guys, now we have finished the video but everyone is still eating. This is our real face. Yes and we are not alone and there are ones that are waiting.