Breaking bread together in the Netherlands, Turkish-style

Every Ramadan, Turkish bakeries in the Netherlands stock their shelves with a delicious bread made of tahini paste. Called tahinli ekmek, and closer to a pastry than bread, it is traditionally eaten in Turkey for suhoor, the pre-dawn meal. A great favourite of the people of Turkish origin, over the years, the bread has also built a fan following among other communities, including non-Muslims.

Kara Firin, a Turkish bakery chain in the Netherlands, makes five types of the bread and claims to be the first in the country to introduce new flavours with nuts such as pistachio, walnut and hazelnut. For some Indian and Pakistani clients, they even do a coconut version of the bread.

Harun Karadeniz, General Manager of the chain, sat down with My Salaam to talk about the origins of the bread. “During the Ottoman empire, tahini became a favoured food among warriors during Ramadan,” he explained. “It is high in calories and provided them with the energy they needed to get through the fasting days. It was usually consumed as a paste that was sometimes mixed with grape syrup and eaten with bread.”

Over the decades, the tahini paste was incorporated into bread, and thus tahinli ekmek was born. At 500kcal per 100gms (about 1,500 kcal per piece), tahinli is pretty substantial and may feel too heavy for today’s fairly low-intensity lifestyle. Making the bread is labour-intensive too, the process taking up to six hours.

Harun says that about 40 years ago, everyone in Turkey made their tahinli at home. People would grind their own tahini paste, make their dough, and roll and form the tahinli by hand. These were the years after the Second World War, when a certain frugal spirit was all-pervasive in Europe.

At Kara Firin, they buy the sesame paste, but the bread is still hand-rolled. The dough is mixed, tahini is massaged into it, and after rising, the dough is rolled into a long strip the width of a finger and then coiled. It is left again to rise and then glazed with eggs, another Ramadan staple. Finally, it is placed in the oven to bake.

Kara Firin is run by Harun and his two brothers, and besides their outlets in the Netherlands, they also supply their products to Germany and Spain. According to Harun, due to the demand, the tahinli at Kara Firin is made and then frozen for easy storage and transport. In the first week of Ramadan, they needed 2,000 pieces, so they started production a few days before fasting began. Harun estimated that they would sell 15,000 pieces of tahinli by the end of the holy month, but it now looks closer to 20,000.

Harun, who is from the Black Sea region in Turkey said, “When we started Kara Firin in 2003, we produced tahinli and introduced the one with pistachio. Before that, it was just plain tahinli with or without sugar. But when I was on vacation in Turkey, I tasted one with pistachio and thought it was great. So we started offering it too.”

His customers would come in and look suspiciously at the new flavor, and he would ask them to taste it; if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to pay. Now, pistachio is the most popular flavour. They have since added walnut and hazelnut too. And for special orders, there’s coconut, which Harun said tastes like a Bounty bar with tahini.

Even the non-Turkish, non-Muslim Dutch look forward to the tahinli. “Before Ramadan, I got emails from my Dutch customers asking when the tahinli would go on the shelves,” Harun added. “So many people and cultures are in contact with each other now. Dutch people respect other cultures. My Dutch neighbour comes around every Eid with chocolates for us.”