Baklava

Ingredients

• Yufka or filo pastry500 g
• Pistachios — coarsely chopped400 g
• Clarified butter300 g
• Sugar500 g
• Water400 ml
• Lemon juice1 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Make the syrup: bring the sugar and water to the boil, cook fifteen minutes, add the lemon juice and cool it completely.

   60 min

2. 2

   Melt the butter and let it settle — use only the clear upper layer and discard the sediment.

   10 min

3. 3

   Lay twenty sheets into a greased tin, brushing each with butter. Scatter the pistachios in an even layer.

   25 min

4. 4

   Cover with twenty more sheets, brushing each in the same way. Butter the top sheet especially generously.

   25 min

5. 5

   Cut it into diamonds with a sharp knife, right down to the base of the tin.

   8 min

6. 6

   Bake at 170 °C for an hour, to a deep gold. Take it out and pour the cold syrup into the cuts at once.

   65 min

7. 7

   Leave it six hours, better overnight. Cutting and serving earlier is pointless: the syrup has not reached the lower layers.

   360 min

About the dish

The syrup rule is absolute: one of the two has to be hot and the other cold. Hot baklava with cold syrup is the classic; both hot gives soggy pastry, both cold and the syrup never soaks in.

Clarified butter goes between the layers, not ordinary butter. Ordinary butter carries water and proteins: the water softens the pastry and the proteins burn over an hour in the oven.

It is cut before baking, not after. Baked pastry shatters under a knife, and the cuts are what let the syrup reach the bottom.

Worth knowing

• — Yufka sheets dry out within minutes. Keep everything you are not working with under a damp cloth.
• — Make the syrup first so it has time to cool. It is the one step that cannot be hurried.
• — Baklava keeps a week at room temperature under a lid. In the fridge the butter sets and the pastry loses its crunch.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

490 kcal

Protein

8 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

54 g

Useful for this recipe

• Oven Temperature Converter

More from Turkey

• Menemen — Eggs cooked into tomatoes and green pepper. They are never beaten and rarely stirred, or you end up with ordinary scrambled eggs.
• Mercimek çorbası — A red lentil soup blended smooth and finished with lemon and paprika butter.
• Lahmacun — A paper-thin flatbread with lamb and pepper paste, baked three minutes in a screaming oven.