Theme of the Week
The theme for this week is stuffed flatbreads from around the world. The first in this 3 day series is bakshalu from my home state in India, which was posted yesterday. Today we travel to Turkey for a savory stuffed flatbread, patatesli gozleme. Patatesli is potato in Turkish and patatesli gozleme tastes a lot like Indian aloo paratha. However, the shape and the seasonings are different.
What is a Gozleme?
Gozleme is a stuffed savory flatbread, a popular snack and a common street food in Turkey. This also makes a filling breakfast and a light meal. There are many variations to gozleme depending on the filling. Most common fillings are cheese, spinach, potato and minced meat. Furthermore, most of these filling are used with or without cheese or with a combination of filling, and the one with potato filling is patatesli gozleme. Now that I tasted potato golzeme, ispanaklı or spinach gozleme is next on my list.
Shape of Gozleme
Unlike numerous fillings, gozleme has only two shapes; a semicircle and a rectangle, semicircle being the popular shape, at least as a street food. Regardless of the shape, the first step to shape the flatbread is to roll the dough into a very thin circle, then sprinkle with a filling and shape accordingly. I prefer the semicircle.
Rectangle gozleme is more photogenic, easy to photograph than the semi-circle, but the shape doesn’t matter since it is cut into wedges before serving. Serve it with some chili sauce or with some yogurt dip.
According to this video, a semi-circle gozleme is rolled into a wrap with salad and spicy sauce as a filling. To prepare gozleme, dough is rolled so thin that when it is shaped into a semicircle, the filling is almost visible from very transparent dough cover. Therefore, using it as a wrap is no surprise. I was unable to roll the dough as thin as in the video, but I guess one needs practice.
Patatesli Gozleme
For today’s post, it is potato and cheese filling. Cheese for the filling is white Turkish cheese and a good substitute is feta. I am not a big fan of feta and went with mozzarella cheese. The seasoning for the filling is crushed red pepper flakes and black pepper. However, I prefer red pepper flakes. The other substitution in the recipe is cilantro for parsley. Few pointers to remember when making gozleme is that dough is sticky but easy to handle and roll the dough as thin as possible. This video was helping in making this stuffed bread, though the recipe is from various online sources.
How to make Patatesli Gozleme
- ½ cup All Purpose Flour
- ⅛ tsp Salt
- ¼ cup Yogurt
- ½ cup grated cooked Potato
- ¼ tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
- ⅓ tsp Salt
- 3 -4 tbsp Mozzarella Cheese
- 2-3 tbsp chopped Cilantro
- Take flour and salt in a wide bowl or a plate and mix.
Add yogurt and mix well to bring the dough together.
- Knead the dough for 8-10 minutes until the dough is very soft. Dough will be on the sticky side.
Let it rest for 30 minutes.
- Filling
Meantime, boil 1 small to medium sized potato. Let the it cool, then peel and grate or mash the potato.
- Season potato grate with crushed red chili flakes, salt and cilantro or parsley.
To this, add cheese, mix the filling, divide it into two parts and keep it aside.
- Divide the dough into two parts.
Take one part of the dough, shape into a round disc, flour dust and roll the dough into a thin 10” circle. Roll it as thin as possible.
For semicircle gozleme, place ½ the potato filling on one side of the circle, bring the other end over the filling, making it a semicircle.
Seal the edges with oil and if necessary cut off the uneven edges with a pizza cutter or a knife to get a perfect semicircle. Brush the top with generous amount of oil.
To shape a rectangle gozleme, place ½ the filling in center of the circle, leaving about 2 ½’ at the edges.
- Bring the two side edges over the filling, then the bottom and the top edges to make a rectangle packet. Using oil, seal the edges and brush the top with generous amount of oil.
- Heat a griddle, lift the gozleme and place the oil side facing down on the griddle.
- Cook on medium flame until cooked, flip the gozleme and cook on the other side.
Once cooked on both sides, remove from the griddle, cut into wedges and serve as is or with some hot sauce or with a yogurt dip such as tzatziki.
- Roll the dough as thin as possible.
- Fillings can vary from potato, spinach, cooked minced meat, cheese, combination of any of these with or with out cheese or a combination of all.
- Seasoning is as minimal as salt, crushed red pepper flakes and/or black pepper.
Like the recipe, Pin It.
This day in 2016: Cucumber Tomato Salad with Sour Cream
This day in 2017: Thandai
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#86
Looks so similar to our aloo paratha and you have made this Turkish delight so perfectly…..and love your clicks..perfect
I could call it Aloo cheese paratha ! But I like the idea of making the dough with all purpose w and yogurt . It will definitely make the dough soft . Let me try this soon and will let you know my experience .
I love that semi circle on so much. Looks uber cute. The rolling of the dough is so much like phyllo pastry and with a bit of practice, you can nail it. The cheese and potato filling sounds super inviting..
I always add cheese along with potato for aloo paratha for kids. Didn’t know they are similar to Turkish flatbreads. Only difference could be we use wheat flour instead of all purpose four. Very nice recipe and they look soo good Usha
wow your gozleme looks perfect and love the semi circle one . cheese and potato filling sounds yummy ..It absolutely needs some skills to roll the dough super thin but yours looks perfect to me .
Though the name is a mouthful, this sounds very much like a variation of aloo paratha. Interesting shape. Love the semi circular one.
All the pictures are stunning usha, I enjoyed when I made this..so fantastic..I love this theme so much..:)..surely makes a meal by itself!
Cheese and potatoes are awesome together in a dish….with all purpose flour and yogurt, this one sounds so tempting. Not to mention your pictures make them absolutely irresistible
This flatbread I really loved. would like to try with whole wheat flour once. Clicks are beautifully taken. Really my mouth watering when I am starting at these pics.
You have shaped them prefectly Usha, they looks much more better than mine. We loved these flatbread very much and my kids are asking me again to make some as well.
As Vaishali said they do sound like aloo cheese paratha but in a new fusion version and shape. I love the rustic background, what exactly is it??
Sapana, that is a 18×18″ self adhesive tile from Home Depot. It is so easy to move around and is always on the table. So these days I am just grabbing and using it for most of my photos. Wish I had picked up a few more colors when they sold individual pieces in the store, couple of years ago. 🙁
Potato and cheese! that combination can never go wrong. Great share!
Wow you have done a lot of research… Shape doesn’t matter. Love both rectangle and semicircle. But again as you said it is not going to matter when we are going to cut them into wedges and gobble it up. Yummm
That looks delicious usha! we love gozleme, i have tried them with potatoes, we love them as a lazy weekend brunch, as it keeps us full for a longer time!!!
I made these a while back and absolutely LOVED them. My potato and cheese loving family gobbled them up. Looking at your clicks, I am tempted to make them some time soon.
this has been on my to do list for so long. Yours look fantastic and pics are awesome