Turkish cuisine is often associated with kebabs, baklava and endless glasses of steaming hot çay (tea). But one of the country’s most beloved street foods may be pide (pronounced PEE-deh), a boat-shaped flatbread topped with cheese, meats or vegetables and baked in a blazing-hot oven.

Often described as a Turkish-style pizza, pide delivers its own distinct flavors and traditions.

We first discovered the dish at Pizza & Pide Turkish Cuisine inside Denver’s Junction Food & Drink food hall. Owner Ismet Yilmaz and his wife, Cahide Tanriseven, offer six pide variations; including Classic (mozzarella and fresh feta), ground beef and cheese, minced meat and cheese, spinach and cheese, 3 Season Pide and beef sausage with eggs.

Yilmaz recommended the 3 Season Pide, divided into thirds with ground beef, spinach, cheese and beef sausage. The ground meat was seasoned with garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, Turkish pepper paste and spices, while the beef sausage carried a pepperoni-like flavor with a slightly higher spice level.

A fresh green salad and a small glass of steaming hot çay rounded out a delicious introduction to Turkish cuisine.

A few months later, we dove deeper into pide and other Turkish flavors during an 11-day Milk Street-Culinary Backstreets food tour of Istanbul. One afternoon in the Bazaar Quarter, our walking tour ended with a hands-on workshop at a pide bakery run by two brothers considered masters of the craft.

One of the brothers demonstrated how to roll and stretch the dough into a long rectangle, deftly lifting it over one hand and swinging it through the air to coax it into a thinner, elongated shape.

Next, we each took a crack at crafting our own pides. The trickiest part was mastering the motion of swinging the dough from our fists — though it proved far less intimidating than learning to toss pizza dough.

Once satisfied with our base, we selected toppings from a lineup of cheeses, meat sauce and sausage. We gently crimped the edges around the filling and twisted the ends into loose knots before lifting each end of the “boat” onto a long wooden paddle bound for the wood-fired oven.

Within minutes, our pide creations emerged, bubbling and golden brown. The oblong breads were sliced into several pieces and passed around the table as we sampled one another’s work and promised we’d be making pide on our outdoor grills for family and friends all summer.

Özlem Warren, our culinary instructor for the week and an award-winning Turkish cookbook author, pointed us to her recipe for pide dough in her cookbook, “Istanbul – Delicious Recipes from the Heart of the City.”

“It’s an easy recipe and easily done at home,” she said in a slightly British accent that, if we closed our eyes, we could channel Julia Child. “It’s a lovely recipe to do with your family, and like you did on the tour, each person can make their own.”

If you’d like to try your hand at pide making, Warren’s recipe includes several topping ideas. Or plan a trip to Denver to visit Pizza & Pide Turkish Cuisine. Either way, it makes for a delicious slice of Mediterranean feasting.