Discover Alida’s pita at their bakery and at Goodies Mediterranean Market in Seattle, Saars in Tukwila, Oskoo Market in Bellevue, and DK Market in Renton.
When he arrived in Seattle, Nechirvan Zebari’s father went to the bakery of their native Fred Meyer to satisfy the folks doing an important job: making bread. In Kurdistan, everybody both made or purchased bread every day, and virtually each road had a bakery. However, as refugees do, he tailored. From his new pals, he realized when he might store to get the bread at its freshest, bringing it residence for Zebari and his seven different kids.
Now, Zebari has that important function himself, baking contemporary Kurdish-style pita at Alida’s Bakery in Everett. “Bread has a management on folks, on me, on us,” he says. “You eat it, you are feeling totally different, you are feeling good.”
Alida’s founder Nechirvan Zebari brings the bread traditions of Iraqi Kurdistan to Everett.
The identical goes for making it. He discovered this out by watching as his older brother Ali and Ali’s spouse, Khalida, began making Kurdish breads in a tandoor. They taught Zebari the household recipes he had been too younger to study when Saddam Hussein kicked American corporations out of Iraq, leaving their father, a safety guard for one, vulnerable to prosecution and with the chance for refugee standing within the US.
“It was so good, and it was so enjoyable,” Zebari says of baking together with his household. “And for them, it introduced again so many reminiscences of being at residence in Kurdistan.” The interest grew to become a ardour for the brothers, then a enterprise.
Zebari scoffs on the scratchy, paper-thin Greek-style pitas many individuals are used to: “I don’t even know why you name it pita; it’s flatbread.” His Kurdish-style pita exits the oven thick and puffed with steam. “For us, bread is fluffy, it’s like a cloud.”
However, by some means, a really robust cloud. The surprisingly strong bread sops up sauces like a Swiffer and maintains its integrity by means of even the messiest of sandwich fillings. Made with simply flour, water, salt, and yeast, it attracts on the alchemy of an oven to bestow its mild taste.
That magic comes with a draw back, although. Many European-style breads use sourdough, which imparts acidity to remain contemporary longer, and lots of mass-produced American breads have sugar or fats, which preserve them moist. Alida’s makes use of none of that, which makes its bread ethereal, but in addition ephemeral. Except, as Zebari suggests, you’re taking a touch from what his dad did after shopping for all of the contemporary bread on the grocery retailer again within the day: Merely freeze it as quickly as you purchase it and pop it within the microwave to refresh earlier than consuming.
