Dostluq Bakery Icon · Tandoor Pastry

Uyghur Samsa

📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Davide Mauro / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Bakers slap the raw pastry straight onto the scorching inner wall of a clay tandoor by hand, reaching into an oven hot enough to bake it in minutes.

A parcel of yeasted dough is filled with diced fatty lamb or beef, onion, and black pepper, sealed, brushed with egg, and pressed onto the inner wall of a cylindrical clay tandoor, where it bakes until the crust blisters and browns. Uyghur bakeries in Almaty's Dostluq neighborhood turn them out fresh all day for locals grabbing a quick, portable lunch.

Why it's made this way: Uyghurs are Kazakhstan's fifth-largest ethnic group, and Dostluq — whose name means 'friendship' — grew into the country's best-known Uyghur neighborhood long before Almaty's modern transit lines reached its edge, keeping tandoor baking alive as an everyday trade.