Baklava (Layered Filo Pastry with Nuts and Syrup)

Variations

• Pistachio baklava: the Gaziantep version is the famous one — Antep pistachios instead of walnuts, no cinnamon, and sheets rolled even thinner, so it is considerably crisper. The photograph on this page is the walnut kind.
• Honey syrup versus sugar syrup: Greece and the Balkans use much more honey and add cinnamon and cloves. The Turkish habit is sugar and lemon only, which puts the nuts further forward.
• Saray sarma and burma: the rolled forms — the same materials wound into a spiral instead of stacked in layers. Spanakopita is the same filo taken in a savoury direction.
• Who it belongs to: that it took its present form in the Ottoman palace kitchens is not disputed, but Greece, the Levant and Central Asia all claim an origin. ko.wikipedia files it under Turkish cuisine and this site followed that, on the same basis as kebab. Knafeh, built on kadayif, is the cousin where the argument runs hotter still.
• Three routes to thin pastry: apfelstrudel stretches a single piece of dough by hand until print shows through it, croissants fold butter in to build layers, and baklava stacks sheets that are already thin. Three different ways to the same end.
• What to serve it with: Turkish coffee or tea. It is very sweet, so it is cut small. The standard slot is dessert after kofte or kebab, and it turns up on a Greek table alongside gyros too.
• How big a piece: 4-5cm diamonds at home. For a feast they are cut smaller still, to one bite.

Tips

• The syrup and the pastry must be at opposite temperatures. Cold syrup onto hot baklava, or hot syrup onto cold. Both hot and the layers drink it instantly and collapse with nowhere to expand. The difference in temperature is what makes the syrup soak in slowly enough to leave the surface crisp. That one line is the whole pastry.
• Make the syrup first. It takes over an hour to cool, so in the other order you simply wait, and the baklava cools while you do. Made first, the timing looks after itself.
• The lemon juice is chemistry, not flavour. Acid in sugar syrup splits sucrose into invert sugar, which will not crystallise. Leave it out and the syrup sets grainy as it cools (what sugar does).
• Clarify the butter. Milk solids do not survive 45 minutes at 180°C. With only the clear fat left, the layers come out bright gold and taste of butter rather than of burning (butter, cooking oils).
• Butter every single sheet. Butter is what keeps the layers apart. Anywhere you skip, two sheets bake into one and that patch chews differently. Brush lightly and evenly — coated, not drenched.
• Dry filo is finished filo. Cover it with a damp cloth the moment it is out of the packet and pull one sheet at a time. Torn sheets are not waste; patch them into the middle layers and nothing shows.
• Thaw it overnight in the fridge. Rushed at room temperature, condensation forms and the sheets weld to each other (freezing and thawing).
• Chop the nuts with a knife. A blender presses out oil and packs the pieces into a paste that sets between the layers and glues them together (knife skills).
• Cut it before baking. Cut afterwards, the top layers shatter and scatter, and the syrup cannot reach the cut faces, so the inside stays dry. Go all the way to the base of the tin.
• Do not mistake underbaked for baked. Pale gold is not done. It has to reach deep gold to stay crisp once the syrup is on it (what your oven is doing, browning and Maillard).
• Four hours minimum, overnight if you can. That is how long the syrup takes to spread evenly from the bottom upwards. Three hours in, the base is wet and the top is dry (serving temperature).
• Never refrigerate it. Cold, the sugar in the syrup sets hard and the layers go soft. Uncovered at room temperature it keeps a week; covered, trapped steam takes the crispness away.