Tost Recipe – The Ultimate Turkish Toastie

Tost: You can’t come to Turkey – at least the west of Turkey – and leave without sampling tost. Tost is a big, tasty toastie and the Turks do a mighty fine tost!

It’s not two tiny slices of bread with a delicate filling and a dainty side salad (unless you’re in an eatery trying to cater for foreign visitors). Instead, expect a half bread – a Turkish loaf cut in half – with your choice of filling.

In  the Fethiye area, the fillings you’re most likely to see on offer are variations of cheese, sucuk and tomato and if you’re in Turkey on a budget, well, you need to hunt out the Turkish toastie. They’ll fill you up, they taste great and they’re cheap!

For those who feel like splashing out and treating themselves, you can order a karışık tost. This is a mixed toast and means you would like all three fillings (our favourite tost).

When we make our own karışık tost at home, of course we have to add a couple of little extras and we use bazlama rather than the usual, equally good, Turkish bread. This is purely for the reason that we’re slightly addicted to bazlama at the moment.

• Slice your tomatoes and sucuk (salami or pepperoni is fine if you can’t get sucuk) and grate your cheese. There are no set amounts for this. We’ve called this a giant tost because we like to squish a lot of filling in between the slices of bread.
• You will notice some chopped fresh chillies in the bottom right of this photo. For us, these are an essential ingredient in any tost. You can ask for chillies in your tost in the Fethiye cafes. Sometimes, they will be added into your sandwich or you might get a small plate of pickles if you are sitting down to eat.

• Preheat your toastie machine.
• Cut your bazlama in half (ciabatta is a good substitute for bazlama) and then carefully slice it through the middle.
• Spread salça across one half of the bread and sprinkle some of the grated cheese on top.
• Add your chopped chillies, followed by the sucuk slices and tomato.
• Sprinkle kekik (dried thyme or oregano) over the top, followed by the rest of the cheese and place your other slice of bazlama on top.
• (Carefully) place your future toastie onto the griddle and pull the lid down. Our griddle comes off its hinge. If yours can do this, take it off the hinge so that you can just rest the top of it onto the toastie. (More even coverage!) If you’re using standard Turkish bread, press down onto the top of the close griddle so you can squash the bread down to make it as flat as possible.
• After 10 or 15 minutes, işte! A personalised Turkish karışık tost. Either wait a few minutes to let it cool down or do what we do and wrap a serviette round it so you can begin straight away and burn your mouth!