Simit | Turkish Kebabs in Dubai - Zurna

Simit or gevrek, is a circular bread, more or less like a bagel typically encrusted with sesame seeds, poppy or sunflower, found across the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire, and the Middle East. Simit’s size, crunch, chewiness, and other traits vary slightly by the varying regions.

Simit comes from the Arabic word Samid, meaning white bread or Fine flour and semolina.
In İzmir, simit is referred to as gevrek, although it is very similar to the Istanbul kinds. Simits from the capital of Turkey, Ankara are smaller, crisper than those from other cities. Turkish simits are made with molasses.
Simit is generally served plain, or for breakfast with tea, fruit preserves, or cheese or ayran. Drinking tea with simit is traditional.

Simits are often sold by street vendors, who either have a simit trolley or carry the simit in a tray on their head. Street merchants generally advertise simit as fresh (“Taze simit!”/“Taze gevrek!”) since they are baked throughout the day; otherwise hot (“Sıcak, sıcak!”) and extremely hot (“El yakıyor!” means “It can burn your hand!”) when they are not long out of the oven.
Simit is an important symbol for lower and middle-class people of Turkey. Sometimes it is called “susam kebabı” ‘sesame kebab’.

A type of bread very similar to simit is known as obwarzanek in Poland and bublik in Russia and Ukraine. The main difference is that the rings of dough are poached briefly in boiling water prior to baking (similarly to bagels), instead of being dipped in water and molasses syrup, as is the case with simit.

Simit has a long history in Istanbul indicating Archival sources showing that the simit has been produced in Istanbul since 1525. Based on Üsküdar court records (Şer’iyye Sicili) dated 1593, the weight and price of a simit was standardized for the first time. The 17th-century traveler Evliya Çelebi wrote that there were 70 simit bakeries in Istanbul during the 1630s. Jean Brindesi’s early 19th-century oil-paintings about Istanbul daily life show simit sellers on the streets. Warwick Goble, too, made an illustration of these simit sellers of Istanbul in 1906. Simit and its variants became popular across the Ottoman Empire.