Turkish Airlines has introduced a menu item called the world’s ‘Oldest Bread’ to its inflight Business class service on select flights. It is made from Einkorn and Emmer wheat, which are considered the world’s oldest varieties of domesticated wheat.
New to the airline’s menu but well-established in Turkish history, the bread reflects Turkish Airlines continuing efforts to share its culture with passengers through cuisine and connecting traditions with modern innovations.
The bread was developed with help from award-winning Turkish culinary historian Ömür Akkor and academic Çetin Şenkul.
The Oldest Bread is a Turkish Airlines project inspired by Anatolian agriculture that began approximately 12,000 years ago in the Taş Tepeler region. Considered one of the centres of the Neolithic Revolution, which led to people transitioning from an itinerant hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled existence that involved farming land, Taş Tepeler was where wheat was domesticated approximately 12,000 years ago. That evolution was key to reshaping humankind’s nutritional habits and social structures.
The bread was officially introduced on flight TK3, from Istanbul to New York on September 22, on which the Turkish flag carrier also premiered a documentary film shot in the Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe and Euphrates River regions with the support of Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Served heated in a commemorative bag with butter and olive oil before the meal service, the bread will be available for intercontinental Business class passengers. It is prepared by the airline’s Istanbul-based catering company, Turkish DO&CO.
Prof. Ahmet Bolat, Chairman of the Board and the Executive Committee at Turkish Airlines commented: “[W]e are pleased to introduce our Business class travellers to the world’s oldest bread grown from the reproduction of ancient wheat discovered in excavations in the Anatolia region. With this bread, traditional to Turkish cuisine and significant to global culinary history, we aim to blend past and present together on our inflight guest experiences. We hope that our new menu item will be appreciated by our guests as we continue our award-winning leadership in the field of inflight dining.”
Turkish Airlines sources 80% of the products used in its menus from local producers.
