İzmir's Judeo-Spanish pastry boyoz to open up beyond borders

A band plays lively music on İzmir's Kıbrıs Şehitleri Street, a smaller version of Istanbul's İstiklal, in front of the Alsancak Bakery. The line in the bakery seems longer and the conversations somewhat longer as people choose their "boyoz" - a puff pastry that is one of the major gifts of the Sephardic Jews, who came to Turkey more than 500 years ago, to the street food culture of Turkey today.

The city of İzmir is not the only place where the Sephardic Jews, who were exiled from Spain in 1492, carried the tradition of boyoz or, more accurately, "bollos," which means "small loaves" in Ladino. But the city managed to transfer the bun from the house of Sephardic Jews to the street: Today, men and women on their way to work grab one of these circular buns, oily within its wax paper wrap. More sophisticated versions, boyoz with artichokes, spinach and minced meat readily become a quick lunch. The commercialization of the pastry only occurred in the 1950s, and even then, there were only three bakeries that sold it. As it became more widespread and started to be sold by simit vendors, the delicate pastry, which should ideally be a single dough layer "no thicker than skin," became thicker and greasier. Boyoz purists would simply refuse to buy one from the streets and insisted that the boyoz should be made by one of the students of Chef Avram, known as the "father" of boyoz-makers in Izmir. Unfortunately, very few of those remain.

The İzmir Trade Chamber is keen to get boyoz, along with İzmir "tulum" cheese, registered geographically as "Boyoz of Izmir," just like the tiles of İznik, olive oil of Ayvalık or Aegean sultanas. 

"We are on the last leg of this process of geographic registration," said Ekrem Demirtaş, the chairman of the İzmir Chamber...