Pide Recipe: Turkish Boat Flatbread with Beef Filling

Step-by-step recipe

1. Pide is quite easy to make. By and large, it's no harder than making pizza. You can prepare the meat filling and the yeast dough at the same time, then assemble everything and bake in the oven. Of all the ingredients, only the meat and the dough need advance preparation. Everything else goes in raw and bakes right in the finished pide. By the way, I noticed that in Turkey they use only a little filling, just a thin layer. See for yourself, the main thing is that you like it.
   
2. Making the dough for the flatbreads
3. The yeast dough is made much like pizza dough. Sift the wheat flour into a bowl. Add 2 pinches of salt and 1 tsp of sugar. Then add the instant yeast. As a rule, an 11 g sachet is meant for 0.5 kg of flour, so for 2 cups of flour half a sachet is enough. Mix the dry ingredients with a fork so they're evenly distributed.
   
4. Pour 150 ml of milk into a glass, regular milk with 2.5% fat or more. Warm the milk slightly so it feels distinctly warm; 15 seconds in the microwave is enough. Add an egg yolk to the milk. I don't put the white in the dough, because it makes the dough a bit stiff, and I don't like that. Mix the milk and yolk with a fork and pour the mixture into the flour.
   
5. Knead the dough with a fork right in the bowl. Add the flour in small portions, stirring until the dough stops sticking to your hands. Roll the dough into a ball and put it in a bowl. By the way, sprinkle a little flour on the bottom of the bowl, and the dough will hardly stick at all. Cover the bowl and leave it in a warm place for 40-45 mins.
   
6. Preparing the meat filling for pide
7. Trim the beef thoroughly of gristle and bones. Small pieces of fat can stay. Grind the meat in a meat grinder. Heat a frying pan and pour in 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, any kind you like. Fry the ground beef in the pan until fully cooked and starting to brown. At first the meat will release juice, and it needs to evaporate. Stir the meat very often so it doesn't burn. Let the cooked meat cool to room temperature.
   
8. Peel the onion and chop it very finely. Carefully peel the skin off a large ripe tomato and remove the seeds. Finely chop the flesh with a knife. Cut the cilantro sprigs fairly coarsely, and better not to use the thick stems. Separately, finely chop the garlic cloves and a piece of fresh chili. Of course, add heat to taste.
   
9. Put the fried ground meat in a bowl and add the chopped onion, herbs, tomato flesh, garlic, and chili. Salt the filling, add 0.5 tsp of sweet paprika, and season generously with ground black pepper. If you like, add coarsely ground dried chili with the seeds, which makes the filling spicier, and that's delicious. Mix all the ingredients and the filling is ready.
   
10. How to shape the filled flatbreads
11. The dough has risen by now. Usually its volume grows 1.5-2 times. Divide the dough into four parts. Actually, it's worth deciding in advance how many flatbreads you'll make and what size. You can make one huge flatbread and cut it into strips when serving, as is done for feasts. Or make lots of small “boats”. It's up to you how many.
    
12. You can roll the dough with a rolling pin on the table, but it's better to use a silicone mat: the dough hardly sticks to it, and there's less to clean up afterward. With a small rolling pin or your hands, stretch the dough into a long oval. Size the flatbread to your baking sheet, as the pide must fit on it. Preheat the oven to 190-200°C in advance, and grease the baking sheet lightly or line it with baking paper.
    
13. Make the flatbread wide enough that you can fold over the edge and form a rim. Spoon a layer of filling onto the rolled dough, leaving 2.5-3 cm from the edge. The amount of filling is a well-known debate. Usually not much filling is used. But many people like a flatbread you can really fill up on. Decide for yourself how much filling to use. I prefer a layer of filling about 1 cm thick, which in my taste is the golden mean.
    
14. Now, and this is important, form the rim, which keeps the filling juicy. First fold together the edges at the narrow ends of the oval and pinch them, which makes the bow and stern of the boat. Then fold the edge of the dough over the filling all the way around and press it down slightly. If the edge of the dough gets misshapen as you fold, it's perfectly fine to pinch it in several places, so the flatbread doesn't unfold when you move it to the baking sheet.
    
15. How to bake pide flatbreads
16. By the time the pide are shaped, the oven is thoroughly hot. Using spatulas or a large knife, carefully move all the flatbreads onto the prepared baking sheet. If the edge of the dough gets a bit disturbed in the move, just fix it. Sometimes the dough is brushed with egg before baking, which is optional.
    
17. Put the baking sheet in the oven. As a rule, flatbreads with a meat filling bake for 30-40 mins. It depends on both the oven and the amount of filling, since it takes time for all the ingredients to heat through. During baking, turn the baking sheet around 1-2 times so the dough bakes evenly. Also keep an eye on the bottoms of the flatbreads, as they bake faster.
    
18. How to serve the flatbreads
19. Pide with ground meat is a versatile dish that can be eaten hot or cold. What's more, it can be reheated. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and move the pastries to a board or platter. Let them cool a little. Small “boats” are served whole, while large ones are usually cut crosswise into strips. Before serving, you can sprinkle the filling with finely chopped cilantro, and lay a few thin slices of tomato or rings of sweet onion on top.
    
20. Sweet pepper, fresh or roasted over a flame, often goes into the filling. Herbs lose their look and properties when baked, so use only a little and better to sprinkle cilantro over the finished pastries.