Pastry & pies Fasting
Simit
The sesame ring of the old Ottoman towns, known across Macedonia as gjevrek and eaten from the bag.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr 45 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total
- 2 hr 5 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 9 ingredients
Method
- Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water and leave it for ten minutes, until a head forms.
- Mix the flour and salt, add the yeast liquid and the oil, and knead for ten minutes. The dough wants to be firmer than a loaf dough; a slack one will not hold the twist.
- Cover it and leave it to rise for an hour, then divide it into eight, roll each piece into a short sausage, oil them and rest them for ten minutes. The gluten has to relax before it will stretch.
- Roll each piece into a rope about seventy centimetres long, fold it in half and twist the two halves around one another, then join the ends into a ring and pinch them hard. A weak join opens in the oven.
- Bring the grape molasses and the 200 ml of water to the boil in a wide pan and take it off the heat.
- Dip each ring into the hot molasses for two or three seconds, let it drain for a moment, then press both sides into a tray of sesame seeds.
- Set the rings on lined trays, cover them and leave them to prove for thirty minutes.
- Bake at 200°C for eighteen to twenty minutes, until the sesame has toasted and the rings sound hollow when you tap the underside.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Маџун (grape molasses)
- Turkish pekmez from a Balkan or Middle Eastern shop; at a push, a tablespoon of dark treacle let down in warm water
- Macedonian type-500 white flour
- strong white bread flour; plain flour gives a softer ring that is stale by lunchtime
- Unhulled sesame seeds
- hulled supermarket sesame, toasted lightly in a dry pan first so it still colours in the oven
