Sigara böreği - Turkish cigarette or pencil pastry

Sigara böreği is a crispy Turkish pastry made from yufka dough and stuffed with shredded Turkish white cheese. There are often various types of additions such as parsley, arugula, pepper (I also came across a version containing spinach). The recipe has Turkish roots and is often seen as a point of pride in Turkish cuisine. But, Sigara böreği's simple ingredients allow for many new interpretations.

Sigara böreği belongs to a broader category of baked goods popular in many regions of the former Ottoman Empire known as börek. Often served as an appetizer or party dish, it has a wide range of regional recipe variations.

Yufka are very thin and round sheets of unleavened flour dough. It is common used to make Turkish bread and cookies. It is considered one of the most important foodstuffs in Turkish cuisine. Yufka cake can be hard to come by. If you don't have access to it, a substitute is often found in the form of filo pastry or even spring roll sheets. Some sources claim that yufka could have been an earlier form of filo/phyllo dough, so in my opinion such a replacement is permissible.

It is also possible to replace the traditional Turkish white cheese with feta. But, you need to be more careful when frying.

The story of Sigar böreği

There is no sure way to determine the age of this dish, but the tradition of börek baking dates back centuries. Records say that such dough was used to create crispy and flaky pastries as early as the late Middle Ages. But, none of these records specifically mention about the shape or the rolling method, which are important for sigara böreği. Thus, it is possible that this dish is a relatively new invention and the result of cultural fusion.