Traditional Bread Baking Method; Pileki Bread

The Culinary Arts Center’s February lecture featured Mrs. Aylin Doğan, a graduate of Yeditepe University, Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department. She is now doing her masters in the same university, and preparing a thesis on “Culinary Culture of Istanbul between 1918-1922.” Mrs. Doğan is also an instructor at Culinary Arts Department of Plato Vocational School, teaching a class on Regional Culinary Culture. Her articles have also been published in books and magazines.

Pileki bread making is one of the areas that Ms. Doğan has researched extensively during her studies. “Pileki” is the name of the stone that is found in mines of Eastern Black Sea Region. The stone is carved into a large bowl that is used to bake corn bread in a wood burning oven. This type of bread takes its name from the stone and is called “pileki” bread.

Mrs. Doğan started her lecture by explaining ancient bread cooking methods;

“Using heated stones to cook with, is one of the oldest cooking techniques. In the prehistoric times, the heated stones were placed in a hole on the ground and the ingredients placed on top of the stone were cooked with the help of the heat from the stone. In fact the first bread in history is made by mixing ground grains with water and the dough is placed on flat stones to dry. Cooking the “pileki” bread in a stone bowl shows a lot of similarities with the prehistoric bread cooking techniques.

The pileki stone is first heated in a wood-burning oven. Then the corn bread dough is placed in the hot stone bowl and covered with a metal sheet. Ash and cinder placed on top of the metal sheet cooks the top while keeping the moisture inside. This way of cooking the bread is somewhat a forgotten trait and only practiced in few of the cities in the Black sea region.  

After the seminar the participants tasted a variety of corn breads, savoy cabbage soup, corn bread and cheese porridge called “mıhlama” and “pepeçura” a traditional grape juice pudding with corn flour.

11 February 2016

The lecture videos in Turkish.