Thursday, September 24, 2009

Pide: Turkish Bread or Ramadan Bread

Well, the shape of a typical turkish bread sold in Turkey is as follows: (Photo from wikipedia)
One of the biggest problem I faced in Holland in my first weeks was to find a tasty bread. I have tried some among a flock of varieties sold at AlbertHeijn in vain: they were really bad in taste to me.. Actually, I didn't think that I would have a bread-problem in Holland since I had managed to "detect" a very tasty bread in Netto when I was living in Denmark, a country with a very similar supermarket profile.

After few weeks of my arrival to Holland, the fasting month (Ramadan) had started; and I discovered Javastraat in the meantime: the street with turkish shops where I could find many turkish things which were not available at AH (eg. red/green lentil, paprika paste, ayran (yoghurt drink), bulgur (broken wheat) among many other things). That's also when I discovered the turkish-morokkon bakery there: Kardaş Bakkerij. (I have just found out now over googling that they now even have a website)

In my first wisit to the bakery, I was SO happy to spot our pide there. Pide is a special turkish bread with a very different shape compared to the traditional one. It is special since it is only sold in the bakeries in Turkey during the month of Ramadan, the fasting month. I really LOVE its taste, I always questioned why it would not be made available throughout the whole year.

Turkish pide, the ramadan bread (pronounced as pedah)

One of my worries during my fasting time in Holland was to be away from my lovely bread, pide. That's why I felt like the happiest person in the world when I saw pides being sold at Kardaş Bakkerij. "the bread torture is over" I cheered up.

The biggest surprise came later, after Ramadan was over. I was again at Kardaş Bakkerij, and to my surprise I saw they were still selling pides. "How come?" I asked "Ramadan is over". And one of the employees there told me "pide is sold throughout the year here in Holland under the name of "turkish bread". How hapy I was! I enjoyed eating pides happily during my stay in Holland whenever I wanted ..

Then I left the country, and my military service started; and soon it was the next Ramadan. And unfortunately we were not served with any pides at the military unit. Having fed myself with pide for 1 year in Holland, it was really sad to miss the 1-month-pide opportunity in my own country..

That's why I even changed my facebook profile picture with a pide photo when Ramadan started last month and I had again access to pides :)

Ramadan was over last week, and I have to wait yet for another year to "reunite" with pides :) One alternative would be to fly to Holland in every couple of weeks to get the taste, if only I was rich enough to do so :)
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