Ekmek Kadayıfı

Made from a dried bread round and no threads at all, soaked until it swells to twice its thickness.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (clotted cream).

Ingredients

the base

• 1 large flat round of plain enriched bread, about 400 g, dried hard

the syrup

• 700 g caster sugar
• 900 ml water
• juice of ½ lemon

to serve

• 300 g clotted cream
• 3 tablespoons pistachios, chopped

Method

1. IT IS MADE FROM A DRIED BREAD ROUND AND NO THREADS AT ALL. The name puts it among the thread pastries and it shares nothing with them but the syrup. What is soaked here is a flat round of plain enriched bread, baked and then dried out completely until it is hard and rusk-like -- light, porous and brittle enough to snap. That dryness is the entire requirement: a dry porous crumb can take up several times its own weight in syrup, and a fresh or merely stale bread cannot. Fresh bread in syrup turns immediately to sweet sludge.
2. IT IS SOAKED UNTIL IT SWELLS TO TWICE ITS THICKNESS, AND THAT IS THE TEST. The dried round goes into a wide pan, hot syrup is ladled over it, and it is simmered very gently and basted for twenty-five or thirty minutes. It rises visibly as it drinks -- a round two centimetres thick becomes four or more, and the surface goes from matt and pale to glossy amber. Lifted out before that, the centre is dry and the dish is a syrupy biscuit.
3. IT IS NEVER TURNED OVER, ONLY BASTED. The swollen bread is extremely fragile and turning it breaks it into pieces. Syrup is spooned over the top every few minutes instead, so it soaks from both directions.
4. THE SYRUP IS THIN AND THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF IT. Seven hundred grams of sugar to nine hundred millilitres of water -- thinner than for most pastries, and enough volume to half-submerge the round. A thick syrup cannot penetrate a dry crumb and glazes the outside instead; and with too little, the round sits proud and soaks unevenly.
5. THE PAN IS BARELY SIMMERING THROUGHOUT. A rolling boil breaks the softening bread apart and reduces the syrup to toffee around it. The surface should barely move for the whole half hour.
6. IT IS COOLED IN THE PAN AND SERVED WITH CLOTTED CREAM, NOT WITHOUT. Cooled completely in its syrup, then cut. The cream is not a garnish here -- the dish is extremely sweet and the thick unsweetened cream is what makes it edible in any quantity.
7. The bread round dried out completely in a low oven, 100°C for 1 HOUR, until HARD and brittle enough to snap.
8. The syrup ingredients brought to the boil and simmered 10 MINUTES to a THIN syrup.
9. The dried round laid in a wide shallow pan and the HOT syrup ladled over.
10. Simmered VERY GENTLY -- the surface barely moving -- 25 to 30 MINUTES.
11. BASTED with the syrup every few minutes. NEVER TURNED.
12. TESTED: it should have SWELLED to about twice its thickness and turned glossy amber. A dry centre means it came out too early.
13. Taken off the heat and COOLED COMPLETELY in the pan.
14. Cut into wedges with a spoon rather than a knife.
15. Served with a generous spoonful of clotted cream and chopped pistachios.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes