I grew up with a delicious bread named the ‘Easter Bread’. All throughout my childhood, I recall rushing to the patisserie right across from our home to buy an Easter bread for the five O’clock tea without ever thinking how it was related to Easter or Christianity. I think now that the cultures in İstanbul had blended so well that no one had noticed anything ‘foreign’ about the delicious bread we were eating with pleasure.
It is only in later years that I realised the emphasis on Easter and how it was related to a Christian tradition. Today, millions in İstanbul still buy the Easter Bread and enjoy it without realising its reference to a Christian tradition.
The story of the Easter Bread goes back to a time before 1960s when İstanbul was a multi-cultural city where communities lived side by side and Christian neighbours would bring Easter Bread to their Muslim neighbours for Easter.
After the tragic decline of the Greek population in İstanbul following 1960s, this tradition diminished but the Easter Bread stayed with us as a reminder of our Christian neighbours. There are no longer Greek patisseries who make the bread but there are Turkish pastry chefs who learnt it from their Greek master chefs and pass on the tradition to younger generations.
Here is a story of pastry chef who is still carrying the tradition with a deep sense of nostalgia for a past that will never be revived!
