Pizza Ovens in Istanbul

[james]

Who would have thought, but we saw more than a handful of brick ovens in Istanbul this weekend. It turns about that there is a "traditional" Turkish pizza and brick oven. You can find a spice minced meat pizza, grilled meat pizza and a cheese pizza with a cheese that tastes something like Gruyere -- along with the basic Italian pizzas.

The pizza is shaped like a football, and the edges are turned up, and the ovens look exactly like the Italian ovens we are all building.

I only took one photo, but our local neighborhood has a number of wood fired ovens. It's here:

http://fornobravo.com/pizza_oven_pho.../Istanbul.html

If anyone can translate the script above the oven, let me know.

A fun side story is that we turned on the TV one night, and the commerical for the local electric oven brand showed a grandmother cooking beautiful casserole (that I had in a restaurant) in a terra cotta pot cooking in a wood-fired brick oven, then faded to a modern family cooking the same casserole in a modern electric oven (which of course did look as good).

What a small world. If you think that the Romans de-camped to Constantinople in about 400 AD, long after Pompeii got covered, you can see that they brought the brick oven with them.

The photo is fun. They use wooden pizza peels, and the tiles are beautiful.

James