Firin (Baking)

The local baker in an Anatolian village is the home cook’s best friend. You can send him any dish and he will cook it for you in his wood-fire stone oven, taking a share of the food as payment if you’re not flush with funds.

In the southeastern town of Gaziantep, I spent a morning in the bakery of Aydın Kilitoğlu, who’s had twenty-nine years’ experience with heat. His place is as big as the average bedroom, but he produces 3000 pides a day. His eleven-year-old son Samet (opposite) works as an apprentice during school holidays—just as Aydın did with his own father.