Amasya çöreği is the pastry that carries the name of the city and carries it farthest. Anyone who passes through Amasya more often than not takes a box of it home, and on the city's tea tables and guest tables it is usually the pastry on the plate. Listed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism among the region's traditional dishes, the çörek gained an official identity in 2021 when the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office registered it with a geographical indication, and a year later its twisted, poppy-seed relative was placed under protection by a separate registration. Walnuts, poppy seed, a leaven made from chickpea water and an oven fired by the same family for about a hundred years are the elements that define both its recipe and its story in the city.

Çörek in Amasya Cuisine

Amasya is known for its long historical record and for a plant cover that shows in its kitchen. Winter preparations in the region begin in summer, and foods dried in the warm months are carried to the table in winter. The daily pattern usually consists of a morning meal called kuşluk and an evening meal; for those working in the fields there is also a separate midafternoon meal, the ikindilik. Beets, poppy seed and sunflower are used often in the kitchen, and these products are also exported. The place of the poppy-seed çörek in this cuisine cannot be thought of apart from the place of the plant in the local kitchen; pounding poppy seed into a paste with olive oil and spreading it between layers of dough is a technique met in Amasya in other pastries as much as in the çörek.

Pastries make up a broad part of this cuisine. The lists of regional dishes name, alongside Amasya çöreği, yağlı (katmer), bişi, cırıtka, döndürme, ekmek aşı, eli böğründe, haşhaşlı cevizli çörek, hengel, kıymasız mantı, kaypak, sini suböreği, tepsi böreği, yakasal böreği and yanuç. In these lists Amasya çöreği and the walnut and poppy-seed çörek appear as separate items. A guide to the flavours of the Central Black Sea region adds yoğurmaç, found in the city's restaurants serving local food: the dough, opened by two people pulling it between them, is layered with butter and a mixture of pounded walnut and poppy seed, gathered back into a ball, rested for fifteen minutes, opened again and sent into the oven. Walnut, poppy seed and folded dough are the common ground of the family of pastries that the word çörek calls to mind in Amasya.

After the misket apple, çörek is the flavour most often associated with the city, and its reputation has crossed the city's borders; today it reaches every part of Türkiye through online sales. The çörek also appears frequently in the city's own gastronomic narrative. Murat Kırlangıç, president of the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says that the city has been home to fourteen civilizations and is one of the rare places in Anatolia where Ottoman palace cuisine was kept alive. A direct link between the çörek and that palace cuisine is not documented; still, the remark, made about the kitchen of a sanjak seat where princes were raised, matters because it shows the frame in which the çörek is presented today.

Ovens and Bakers in Old Amasya

The written history of the çörek does not reach back beyond the early twentieth century, but the oven that bakes it and the baker who tends it appear in the city's records much earlier. In the volumes of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar devoted to the notables of Amasya, it is recorded that Hâfızeddîn Mehmed Çelebi, who lived in the fourteenth century, was "the son of Etmekçi Halîl of Amasya", known among the common people as Etmekçizâde and among scholars as "Habbâzî Çelebi", a name derived from the Arabic word of the same meaning, baker. Educated in Kayseri, teaching in Amasya and favoured by Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha, this scholar died after 783 (1381). The same work names a Bünyâd Çelebi, also called Etmekçizâde and likewise introduced as "the son of Etmekçi Halîl of Amasya", who became a madrasa teacher and a judge and died after 848 (1444); the gap in time suggests either that the two Halîls were not the same man or that the byname passed down the family from generation to generation. That a baker's sons rose into the city's learned class, and that the byname was carried across generations, shows that baking was a trade in Amasya that gave a person identity and a name.

In the Ottoman period ovens were often among the income-producing properties of pious endowments (waqfs). Osman Fevzi Olcay, in his memoirs of Amasya in the early twentieth century, gives vivid examples. Beside the first room on the Yeşilırmak side of the madrasa built, as Olcay remembered, in 902 (1496) by Mehmed Pasha of the Kösemihaloğulları, there was a bread house and an oven; in this oven, whose founder "had not neglected this social aid", pide was baked especially throughout the month of Ramadan and distributed to the poor of the quarter and to charitable service. Beneath the Kurdoğlu Mehmed Bey Madrasa, next to the Mehmed Pasha Mosque, there was also a bread oven that Olcay called "excellent", built together with the coffeehouse and shops beside it to provide income for the madrasa.

The city's well-known bakers also appear by name in the same memoirs. The bread of Baker Buusoğlu's oven, in line with the Vakıfhan, was in Olcay's words "of great renown in Amasya"; Baba Efendi, who worked at the post office, had bread given in front of this oven every morning to the twenty or more street dogs that followed him, and went on to his office only once the animals were fed. Across from the Gümüşlü Mosque stood the house of Baker İbrahim Ağa from the village of Yenice, who kept an oven in the Selağzı quarter; the house where Olcay lived as a tenant for four years after his marriage stood directly opposite a simit bakery. What stands out in these detailed descriptions is that the memoirs mention neither çörek nor a çörek maker. This silence does not prove that the çörek was unknown in those years; it does suggest, however, that the pastry now regarded as a symbol of the city was not, in Olcay's youth, a shop product as often mentioned as bread and simit. The 1920s, when the Doğla family began baking çörek, sit well with this picture.

The Leaven of the Dough: Chickpea Water

The most distinctive feature that sets Amasya çöreği apart from similar pastries is that the dough is leavened with chickpea water; dry yeast appears only in the recipe for the twisted çörek, and there alongside the chickpea water. The registration certificate describes the preparation of this leaven in detail. Ten to fifteen chickpeas are crushed in a mortar and placed in a glass container, two hundred millilitres of water warmed to 35-40 degrees and a dessert spoon of white sugar are added, and the container is closed and left for three days. For the leaven to mature, the container must stand in a place that receives sunlight, at a temperature of 22-25 degrees and a humidity of 45-60 percent. When the leaven matures, a dense foam appears on its surface and it is ready for use. The registration text states that the chickpea water acts as the leaven and is one of the two elements that give the çörek its distinctive character.

Chickpea leaven is one of the old bread leavens of Anatolia and is not peculiar to Amasya; what distinguishes the city's çörek is that this leaven is still in use. The registration certificate prepared for the çörek of neighbouring Tokat describes in more technical language how the same kind of leaven works. The flora of chickpea-leavened dough contains both homofermentative and heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria together with yeasts, and by the end of fermentation the dough grows by thirty to forty percent over its initial volume. According to the same document, the leaven makes the dough softer and easier to work, improves crust colour, taste, aroma and texture, and gives a richer flavour profile than çörek made with fresh yeast. In Tokat salt is added to the leaven, the chickpeas are left with boiled water at 37-40 degrees for sixteen to eighteen hours, and the strained liquid is used, which differs from the sugared, three-day method of Amasya. That two neighbouring cities prepare the same leaven in different ways shows that this knowledge was passed on with variations from house to house and from oven to oven.

A master's thesis on the strength of chickpea leaven helps explain why two leavens are used together in the twisted çörek. In the study prepared by Pelin Baykara at Trakya University in 2006, dough kneaded with chickpea leaven alone was measured to produce far less carbon dioxide than dough kneaded with commercial pressed yeast, while retaining almost all of the gas it did produce. The acidity of the chickpea leaven was also found to be markedly higher. Breads made with pressed yeast lost moisture during storage and went stale faster, and in the sensory evaluation the breads in which a small amount of pressed yeast was used together with chickpea leaven were liked best. Since the subject of the thesis was not çörek, these results cannot be applied directly to the ovens of Amasya; but the presence of dry yeast side by side with chickpea water in the recipe for the twisted çörek may point to an old baker's experience seeking the same balance.

Preparing the dough requires patience. Because the chickpea water stands for three days, the leaven has to be prepared in advance, and the çörek is not a pastry one can decide to make and bake on the same day. The dough, kneaded without much leaven, is described in sources on the region as having a balance that is lightly sweet and lightly salty.

How Amasya Çöreği Is Made

The recipe for Amasya çöreği, registered under number 874, consists of a kilogram of special-purpose wheat flour, a hundred and fifty grams of walnut kernels, a hundred and fifty grams of butter, five grams of salt and chickpea water; two egg yolks, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a tablespoon of vegetable oil are set aside for the top. The flour is sifted into a bowl, a well is made in the centre, and the chickpea water, butter, pounded walnut and salt are placed in it. The mixture in the centre is gradually worked into the surrounding flour and kneaded into a soft dough. In this way the walnut does not remain a filling added later but becomes part of the dough itself. The dough is shaped into a roll, divided into fifteen or sixteen equal pieces, and the pieces are rolled in the palm into balls.

The balls are set on a greased rectangular baking tray and left covered to rest for half an hour. Their tops are then scored and they are baked for about fifteen minutes in an oven preheated to 250 degrees. When the çörek have risen and formed a crust they are taken out, quickly brushed with a mixture of egg yolk, sugar and oil, and returned to the oven for about twenty minutes more. The registration counts this two-stage baking, together with the chickpea leaven, as the distinctive feature of the çörek. The dough that sets its crust in the first baking acquires, in the second, a glossy and darker surface from the sugared, oiled egg wash. Once cooled, the palm-sized, half-moon çörek are packed into cardboard boxes suitable for food.

The recipe in the registration text is a standard one that reduces the bakery's quantities to a household scale. It is known that in the Doğla bakery the çörek is baked over a wood fire, and details such as the heat of the oven, the management of the fire and the placing of the dough balls inside the oven are a craftsman's knowledge that lies outside the written recipe.

Burmalı Amasya Çöreği

The second product protected under the name çörek in Amasya is Burmalı Amasya çöreği, the twisted Amasya çörek, registered under number 1136. Its dough is made of wheat flour, water, salt, dry yeast and chickpea water, and its filling is a poppy-seed paste prepared with olive oil, together with walnut kernels. The quantities in the registration certificate are for five çörek: seven hundred and fifty grams of flour, half a litre of water, twenty grams of dry yeast, fifteen grams of salt and two hundred millilitres of chickpea water. Two hundred millilitres of olive oil are used to roll out the dough, the filling is prepared by mixing a hundred and fifty grams of pounded poppy seed with a hundred millilitres of olive oil, and a hundred grams of walnut kernels are scattered between the layers. The registration text states that this çörek was first produced in 1925.

Making it is far more laborious than the plain Amasya çöreği. Once the dry yeast has dissolved with sugar and warm water, the chickpea water, sifted flour and salt are added and the dough is kneaded for seven or eight minutes until it no longer sticks to the hand. It is divided into five equal balls and rested for fifteen minutes. Each ball is rolled out with a rolling pin on an oiled counter, with four tablespoons of oil poured over it, to a diameter of about fifty centimetres and laid on a tray lined with baking paper. A quarter of the filling is spread over the sheet and walnut is scattered on it; the five sheets are stacked in this way, and only the filling is spread on the top sheet. The sheets are pressed by hand until they reach the edges of the tray, then cut down the middle with a knife and laid one on top of the other.

The twist that gives the çörek its name comes next. Starting from the short side, the layered dough is cut into strips three centimetres wide; the strips are stretched a little by hand, twisted into spirals and laid side by side on the same tray with no gaps between them. Brushed with a mixture of egg yolk and oil, the tray is left for twenty minutes in an oven heated to 100 degrees and then switched off, so that the dough can rise; it is then baked at 200 degrees for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the top is browned. Unlike Amasya çöreği, baked individually at the size of a palm, the twisted çörek is baked tray-sized and served in slices. The mention in news reports of the master's "finger-shaped" walnut and poppy-seed çörek fits this structure made of strips.

Two Registrations, Two Pastries

The application for Amasya çöreği was filed on 24 February 2021 by the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union, and the registration was completed on 24 August 2021. The application for the twisted çörek was filed only a few weeks after the first registration, on 4 October 2021, by the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the registration was completed on 7 June 2022. The two products are also inspected by separate bodies. Amasya çöreği is inspected by a three-member board made up of one expert each from the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union, the Amasya Vocational School of Social Sciences of Amasya University and the Amasya Tourism Association; this board pays particular attention to the shape of the çörek and to the suitability of the chickpea water used as leaven. The twisted çörek is inspected under the coordination of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry by a board of at least four members, the chamber's representative joining the same institutions. Both boards may inspect once a year as a rule, and at any time in the event of a complaint.

The separate protection of two products bearing the name çörek shows that in the city the word does not refer to a single recipe. At one end of local production stands the buttery, flat-doughed, half-moon çörek with walnut worked into the dough; at the other, the olive-oil çörek filled with poppy seed and walnut, rolled out in layers and twisted. In one the fat is butter, in the other olive oil; one is leavened with chickpea water alone, while in the other chickpea water is used together with dry yeast. Small differences of shape also appear in the sources: one news report relates that the master makes a round walnut çörek and finger-shaped walnut-and-poppy-seed and poppy-seed çörek separately, whereas the registration text defines the walnut çörek as half-moon in shape. This difference suggests that the pastry bearing the same name may have been prepared in different forms in different bakeries and at different times.

Galip Doğla and the Century-Old Bakery

The name most often mentioned in the registration process is Galip Doğla, the çörek maker of Amasya. According to news reports, the Doğla family has baked the çörek for three generations, since 1925. His grandfathers Ahmet and Hakkı Doğla began baking it about a hundred years ago, and the recipe passed from father to son. Galip Doğla, sixty-one at the time of the registration, learned the recipe from his father Hakkı Doğla and shares it with no one except his daughter, a food engineer. He still lights his oven himself. The çörek is baked over a wood fire in the workshop on Habibi Sokak in the Pirinçci quarter, which has been in operation for about a hundred years. The regional food guide also notes that this shop in the city centre has baked poğaça along with çörek for three generations, and that the walnut and poppy-seed çörek are best bought early in the morning, fresh from the oven.

Customers ask the master for the recipe, saying that the çörek they make at home do not stay fresh for as long as Doğla's; on this point the master says only that if someone keeps trying a little longer, one day they may manage it. Saime Çoban, president of the Amasya Tourism Association, has related that they visited the master often to solve the secret of the recipe and tried to make a similar çörek themselves, but that it never came out like Galip Usta's. It is worth noting in this respect that, after the registration, the Tourism Association sits on the inspection boards of both çörek. Mehmet Sarı, mayor of Amasya, stated that it was unclear what would become of the çörek after Galip Usta, that the city wanted production to continue, and that this age-old secret had for years remained unsolved by Amasya.

The picture that emerges from these accounts is of a craft that lives in the city preserved around the family of one master baker. One point needs care here: the hundred-year history of the çörek belongs to the Doğla family's bakery; we have no documents on whether çörek making in Amasya is older than that. The registration texts too are content to say that the çörek has a long history. The date of 1925 given for the twisted çörek is the only date that coincides with the Doğla family's account, and it is reasonable to think that the registration file most probably took this date from the family's own account.

The Question of Freshness

In the sources, the difference between homemade çörek and the bakery's is described mainly in terms of how long it stays fresh. That Doğla's çörek keeps for a long time without spoiling is the main reason customers want to learn the recipe. The registration certificates, however, set a cautious limit on this point: according to both documents the çörek keeps its quality at room temperature for one day at most, while in vacuum bags or in the freezer it can be kept for up to six months. The gap between the existence of çörek sent out of the city in boxes and this one-day limit may stem largely from the fact that the master's çörek and the standard recipe are not the same thing.

Which stage actually accounts for the long freshness of the master's çörek, whether the chickpea water, the butter, the two-stage baking or the oven, is not explained in any written source. Experimental findings showing that chickpea-leavened breads go stale later than breads made with pressed yeast, and the statement in the Tokat çörek registration that fat lengthens the product's shelf life, are plausible clues; even so, since no study has been made of the Doğla bakery's çörek, anything said on this subject remains conjecture.

A Neighbouring Tradition: Tokat Çöreği

About three weeks after the registration of Amasya çöreği, on 17 September 2021, the çörek of neighbouring Tokat also received a geographical indication under number 895. The common element linking the çörek of the two cities is chickpea leaven. Tokat çöreği consists of special-purpose wheat flour, chickpea leaven and water, and is baked in ovens with a firebrick floor, fired with hornbeam or oak wood. Alongside the plain version there are walnut, raisin-and-walnut, sugar-and-walnut and honey-and-walnut varieties; the walnut version uses Niksar walnuts, themselves a registered product. Because it is light and filling it is counted among the indispensables of the Ramadan table, and moulds are used to press designs of a crescent, a star, a heart or a flower onto its surface. The regional food guide writes that in Tokat a family baking chickpea-leavened çörek has carried on the work from father to son for a hundred and twenty-seven years.

This comparison shows that Amasya çöreği is part of a baking tradition widespread in the Yeşilırmak basin. At the same time it shows where Amasya set its own çörek apart: in its plain form Tokat çöreği is close to an unsalted, unsweetened and fat-free bread, whereas Amasya çöreği is a tea pastry enriched with butter and walnut and baked twice under a sugared glaze. The poppy-seed filling of the twisted Amasya çörek does not appear among Tokat's registered varieties.

The Çörek at the Table

Records of regional dishes group Amasya cuisine under four headings: soups, meat dishes, desserts and pastries. Among the soups are çatal çorba, sakala çarpan, toyga, cilbir, helle, kesme ibik and yarma soup; among the meat dishes, bakla dolması, okra with meat, keşkek, ciğer sarması, madımak, mıhlama, mumbar, beet with pastırma, patlıcan pehli and sulu köfte. The dessert table includes dene hasudası, kuymak, yuka tatlısı, ayva gailesi, gelin parmağı, gömlek kadayıfı, höşmerim, şeker böreği, unutma beni, vişneli ekmek and zerdali gailesi. Within this wide list, the çörek stands out as a pastry eaten between meals alongside tea.

In the city's food culture, ikindilik is remembered as the time when those working in the fields took a separate meal; the sources do not state outright the link between the çörek and this daily rhythm, but its presentation as a pastry served at tea time shows that it is regarded as a food of the day's in-between meal. Offered to guests, taken along by travellers and carried as a gift, the çörek is also one of the names most often mentioned among the city's local products. The twisted çörek, baked in a tray and served in slices, is better suited to crowded tables and to receiving guests.

Among the çörek's registered relatives are baklalı dolma, çiçek bamyası, Merzifon keşkeği, the misket apple and beji marble. Among them, the çörek stands apart for being something that can be eaten on its own, kept and carried. Unlike keşkek, eaten with a spoon, or okra, tied to its season, the çörek can leave the city in a box, and so its name reaches people who have never seen Amasya.

The Registration Process and the City's Geographical Indications

The registration of Amasya çöreği was part of an effort led by the Governorship of Amasya. The application was filed by the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union, and the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry took part in the process. The registration reached the news on 14 September 2021, and on the same day a promotional event was held at the Büyük Amasya Hotel, attended by Governor Mustafa Masatlı, Mayor Mehmet Sarı and Chamber president Murat Kırlangıç. Governor Masatlı said there that geographical indications serve to protect a place's distinctive products by preserving their taste, shape and method of production true to the original, and that the registration would draw the interest of domestic and foreign visitors coming for gastronomic tourism.

Speaking at the event, Kırlangıç noted that until then the city had only four products with geographical indications: çiçek bamyası, Merzifon keşkeği, Amasya beji marble and the Amasya misket apple. With the registration of baklalı dolma and the çörek the number rose to six, and Kırlangıç said they aimed to raise it to twenty-four through planned applications. In some news reports this target was misreported as the number of registered products having reached twenty-four. At the promotional meeting held in June 2022, again at the Büyük Amasya Hotel, after the registration of the twisted çörek, it was announced that the number of registered products had risen to ten; the meeting was attended by the garrison commander, the rector of Amasya University and the president of the union of tradesmen's chambers as well as the governor and the mayor. At this meeting Kırlangıç also stated that the products should be registered not only in Türkiye but also in the European Union, and that the chamber had applied for a European Union geographical indication for çiçek bamyası for this purpose.

What a geographical indication means in practice is set by the logo and the designation-of-origin emblem to be used on the product itself and on its packaging. Where these cannot be used on the product or packaging, the logo and emblem must be kept in the business where they can easily be seen. The registration is conditional on all stages of production taking place within the borders of Amasya province and by the prescribed method; legal proceedings to protect the rights are conducted by the registering body. Statements at the time stressed that geographical indications revive the local economy, support rural development and women's employment, and contribute to gastronomic tourism. Such statements show the aims of the registration; no published data exists on whether production or sales of the çörek have increased concretely since the registration. A survey of gastronomy businesses in Amasya carried out between 2019 and 2021 likewise found a widespread view that local products contribute strongly to the promotion of the city, while promotional activities were judged insufficient.

The Çörek Today

Today Amasya çöreği can be found in the city's bakeries and patisseries, and some producers box it and send it out of the city. Besides its place on the tea-time plate, it lives on as a treat that travellers take with them. Its filling of walnut and poppy seed, combined with the lightly sweet and lightly salty balance of the dough, has made the çörek a pastry that can be eaten both at breakfast and with afternoon tea.

The real question about the çörek's future is that the recipe remains hidden in the hands of a single master, and this is the concern voiced by the mayor. The registration certificates have set down in writing the ingredients, the quantities and the method by which the çörek is to be made, and have left its inspection to boards made up of the university and professional bodies. Yet the recipes in the documents do not contain unwritten knowledge such as the fire of the oven and the master's hand; the difference in freshness between the Doğla bakery's çörek and the çörek of the registration text is the most concrete sign of this. How far the geographical indication and the promotional work will fill this gap remains to be seen.

Chronology

783 (1381): Hâfızeddîn Mehmed Çelebi, son of Etmekçi Halîl of Amasya and known as "Habbâzî Çelebi", died after this date (Hüsameddin).

902 (1496): According to Olcay's recollection, the Mehmed Pasha Madrasa was built; in the oven beside it pide was baked in Ramadan and distributed to the public.

1925: The twisted Amasya çörek was first produced in this year; the Doğla family also began baking çörek in the same years (registration text and news accounts).

24 February 2021: The Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union filed the geographical indication application for Amasya çöreği.

24 August 2021: Amasya çöreği was registered as a designation of origin under number 874.

14 September 2021: The registration was presented in Amasya and reported in the press.

17 September 2021: The chickpea-leavened çörek of neighbouring Tokat was registered under number 895.

4 October 2021: The Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry filed the application for the twisted Amasya çörek.

7 June 2022: The twisted Amasya çörek was registered as a designation of origin under number 1136.

22 June 2022: The geographical indication promotional event for the twisted Amasya çörek was held, and it was announced that the city's number of registered products had risen to ten.

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

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