What is Balkan bread?
A few years ago, I went to a restaurant on the water in Tel Aviv-Yafo called Manta Ray. They served this most exceptional bread they called Balkan bread. It reminded me a little of a focaccia in texture, but I don't think it was focaccia. I have a student from the Balkans whom I asked about it, and she didn't recognize any such kind of bread. Anyone have any idea what this Balkan bread might be?
Best Answer
It's almost certainly a type of pogacha, or possibly kruh.
Originally, "pogacha" basically meant "bread baked on a hearth", or in other words, "bread" (when the word was invented, almost all bread was baked on a hearth). Thus, there are as many different kinds of pogacha as there are of bread.
The word derives ultimately from the Latin panis focacius, i.e. bread (panis) baked on the hearth or fireplace (focus), via the Italian focaccia and, more directly, south Slavic languages (cf. poga?a / ??????).
However, the true Balkan/Turkish pogacha is said to be quite similar to focaccia:
The Poga?a or Pogacha (Hungarian: Pogácsa, Greek: ?????????, Cyrillic: ??????, Turkish: po?aça, Albanian: pogaçe) is a type of bread baked in the ashes of the fireplace, and later on in the oven, similar to focaccia, with which it shares the name (through Byzantine Greek: ???????), found in the cuisines of the Balkans, Hungary and Turkey.
Pogacha (Balkan/Turkish traditional bread)
Video (thumbnail above) of a focaccia-like pogacha recipe
Belokranjska Poga?a (Slovenia's answer to focaccia)
Kruh (Traditional Croatian bread, baked in a “peke”)
Again, "kruh" just means "bread", so the term itself is very broad - you'll need to search through different kinds of kruh (and pogacha) to find the one that looks like what you have in mind. A "peke" is a cooking vessel, somewhat like a dutch oven, usually made from cast iron.
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