Zeytinli açma (Turkish soft bread rolls filled with olives)

I don’t bake much, it’s not that I don’t enjoy bread, but the process of baking always seems to be a bit too precise. However I had been dreaming of zeytinli açma, the beautiful soft Turkish bread rolls stuffed with a tangy black olive paste. One of the first things I do as soon as I arrive in Turkey is to hunt out one of these beauties, usually easy enough as a branch of a certain world famous coffee shop in the arrivals hall stock them. I only realised I had a bit of an addiction a couple of years ago when I realised I was planning my day around where I could buy my next fix…

I’m back in turkey next month, but as I’m still trying to get to grips with the oven in my new house I decided to try my hand at some baking, and what better bread to start than with the delicious zeytinli açma. I wasn’t too precise about measuring out the ingredients, and as far as the cooking times go, my oven doesn’t have a temperature scale so I’ll have to be a bit vague with regards to timing, but the end result was extremely tasty! The quantities make 10 açma, enough to eat with a few left over to freeze for later.

Ingredients
3 cups of white flour
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup of milk
A sachet of yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
Squeeze of honey
Salt

For the filling

100 g black olives

2 tablespoons margarine (or butter)

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the milk and vegetable oil. Mix together, you should get a moist dough. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise for an hour
2. To make the olive filling, puree or finely chop the olives, and add a tablespoon of margarine or softened butter
3. Break off tangerine sized pieces of the dough and roll into balls, these quantities should make 10
4. Taking one ball of dough, roll it into a sausage shape and either squash flat, or roll flat with a rolling pin. This doesn’t have to be too precise. 

5. Take a spoonful of the olive and margarine mixture and spread on the surface of the dough. Roll up, and taking one end of the roll in each hand, twist and then form into a ring. Don’t worry if some of the filling starts to come out, this is the intended effect
6. Repeat with the remainder of the dough
7. Brush the tops of the açmas with milk or egg yolk (most recipes call for egg yolk, I had no eggs in the house) and sprinkle with sesame seeds or nigella seeds
8. Bake for around 20-30 minutes