Simit – For Those Who Miss It

Sigrid from the fabulous “il cavoletto di bruxells” was in Istanbul (where she took great pictures, not only of food, that brought tears to my eyes), and the first thing she asked when she came back was a recipe for simit, the savory sesame rings with just a hint of sweet. Simit is the omnipresent street food in Istanbul, and she seems to have fallen in love with it.

If you live in Turkey, skip this post, go out and buy yourself a simit from the simit-boy. Simit, just like pizza, is one of those foods you shouldn’t attempt at home unless you have no other means of obtaining it. Why? Because, most probably, you don’t have a wood burning stone oven at your home. If you do, like I did for one and a half very happy years in my life (in Liguria), you should bake a pizza or bread everyday!

But I do know how it is when you crave a specific food, so here is a recipe to help you till the next time you go to Turkey; it comes as close as possible to the simit in Istanbul. Go put that teakettle on the stove and then start with it, your tea and the simits will be done at the same time, so quick and easy it is. Oh, have to go buy some kasar cheese, these will be perfect for breakfast!

Note: This recipe yields the street-type, crisp simit; not the soft “pastane” type.

Simit
adapted from various sources
makes 8 – 10 simit rings

prep: 10 mins + 15 min for the dough to rest
bake: ca. 10 mins at 250°C (or as hot as your oven gets)

flour, type 550 (all-purpose/bread flour in the USA, not instant!)*, 1kg
fresh yeast, 10g (or instant yeast 4g or dry yeast 5g)
salt, 2-3 tbsp
water, ca. 550 ml, lukewarm
pekmez, 3 tbsp (or molasses)
sesame, ca. 75 g (use “simit susamı” if you can find, or Japanese roasted sesame “irigoma shiro”, these are darker than the normal white sesame)

Turn your oven heat to maximum. In my oven this is 250°C.

In a big bowl, mix the flour and the salt. Dissolve the yeast in about a cup of the measured lukewarm water. Add the yeasty water to the flour, then start adding the rest of the water, while kneading. You want to achieve the most famous “earlobe” consistency. You may not need all of the water, but also you might need up to 100 ml more than stated. It depends on a lot of factors like your flour, the weather etc., but don’t get discouraged, even a non-baker like me managed this. I needed exactly 550 ml of water. Knead till everything comes together and feels smooth, around 10 minutes. At the end you have an elastic and non-sticky dough. I don’t have a mixer or the like in this apartment, so I kneaded by hand, but you could let the machines do the work as well! Just watch for the consistency. Let the dough stand in a warm place, covered, for 15 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix pekmez with 2-3 tbsp of water**. If you can’t find pekmez where you live, use molasses, it is perfectly fit for this recipe. Place your sesame seeds on a shallow plate.

Divide the dough into 8 to 10 tennis ball-sized pieces. Push your thumb in the middle to make a hole, then slowly turn the “ring” around, with both hands, in the air, gently kneading and squeezing to enlarge and thin-out the dough to finger thick, while the hole in the middle gets bigger.

Brush the simit rings with the pekmez mixture and then, one by one, dip the rings into the plate with the sesame seeds, so that they are covered all over. Place the rings on a baking sheet*** and bake for ca. 10 minutes, till a darker shade than golden.

* For more on how the different types of flours in Europe and the USA correspond to each other, read this, this and this.

** Some recipes let you make a thinner pekmez mixture (1 tbsp to 1 liter of water) and dip the rings into it. I tried the first simit with this method, but wasn’t happy with the results, the color was too light and the taste was not pronounced enough. Simit is not a sweet, but there should definitely be a sweet undertone which goes perfect with the sesame seeds. Yet other recipes let you boil the rings in this light mixture before baking them, but this results in a softer texture, like a bagel or a “pastane simidi”. For real street-style simit, brushing the rings with slightly diluted pekmez delivered the best results.

*** I froze some rings (fully coated) and will try to bake them later. Will update the post as to how that goes! Update: Freezing makes no problems. Just take the unbaked simit out of the freezer an hour before baking. If you don’t have that time, you could also bake from frozen, but you’ll need to bake longer (check after 20 minutes).