The Turkish street food that is a sesame-covered ring of bread is simit.
Simit is a circular bread made from dough and coated generously with sesame seeds before baking. It usually has a crisp, deeply browned exterior and a chewy interior, making it a popular breakfast food and street snack. Vendors in Turkey traditionally sell simit from carts or carry trays of it through city streets.
The bread has roots in the wider former Ottoman and Byzantine worlds. Historical accounts describe ring-shaped breads in Constantinople, while Ottoman records show simit production in Istanbul by 1525. By the 1630s, traveler Evliya Çelebi wrote that Istanbul had dozens of simit bakeries.
Simit is commonly eaten plain or with cheese, preserves, fruit, tea or ayran. In İzmir it is often called gevrek, meaning “crisp,” while related ring breads have different names across the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. It is sometimes compared with a bagel, but simit is typically coated with sesame and does not follow the same standard boiling process.