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Naturally Leavened Turkish Poğaça
Poğaça (pronounced poe-ah-CHA) is one of the most classic homemade baked goods in Turkish households. It’s a soft bread somewhere between a savory scone and a roll, perfect for breakfast, teatime gatherings, and as a healthy after school treat for kids. This bread taps into my childhood memories of walking into my house and smelling the welcoming aroma of poğaças served with freshly brewed tea.
I moved to North America in my early thirties and my current home is Canada. My culinary experience here has expanded to include sourdough baking, where I often revisit the classic recipes of my heritage, using them as inspiration but implementing sourdough processing without other leavening agents. So while poğaça is usually leavened with baking powder, this recipe uses sourdough starter.
My day job is as a cancer pathologist and I’m passionate about gut health and the connection between food and health in general. In my opinion, being healthy and happy has a lot to do with keeping the basics as simple as possible. Just like a beautiful sourdough bread: water + flour + time and lots of love.
In this recipe, I maintain the essential ingredients of poğaça: yogurt and olive oil, which are staples of Turkish and Ottoman cuisine. Using sourdough starter instead of baking powder lengthens the process from about 30 minutes to 6-18 hours, depending on whether you refrigerate the dough after the first rise, but your active work with the recipe is short and simple. Here’s a video showing how you can mix up the dough.
Time and sourdough fermentation are what give these poğaças their amazing complex flavor and crispy crust. They’re incomparable to the traditional method with baking powder (in my humble opinion).
Tasty poğaça interior and crust
This is a forgiving recipe, and you should adjust the flour amount as you are mixing, since your flour’s strength and type will make a difference, as will the water content of your yogurt. Be sure to use plain whole milk yogurt, though, for the correct flavor and crumb tenderness. The final dough should be soft, non-sticky, and easy to work with. It should “feel like an ear lobe,” as a Turkish mom’s recipe might say.
A variation with pecorino romano, mozzarella, and chives. The dough is 250g all purpose flour and 50g whole grain durum wheat, but other flours can be used instead.
I like recipes that are versatile, healthy, and simple. This same dough could be used many other ways, and the filling can be modified. The most classic one is a crumbled Turkish white cheese or Greek feta cheese with parsley and dill.
Poğaças ready to bake
Other herbs such as oregano or chives, and cheeses such as asiago work as well, and on my Instagram @dishesfromafar, you can see I’ve used this same dough as a savory pie crust and filled it with sardines and caramelized onions.
Naturally Leavened Turkish Poğaça
Classic Turkish poğaças, made with olive oil and yogurt, are like healthy cheese-and-herb scones. My variation uses natural sourdough leavening for an even healthier, more flavorful result. I love how layered and crispy these poğaças turn out, and how versatile the dough and fillings are.
Ingredients
Dough
Fillings and Toppings, add to taste
Instructions
Shopping List
Naturally Leavened Turkish Poğaça