Filo
Baklava, made with filo pastry
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| Alternative names | Filo pastry, phyllo, fillo |
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| Type | Pastry |
| Main ingredients | Flour dough |
Filo (or phyllo) (Greek: φύλλο "leaf") is a kind of very thin unleavened dough used for making pastries such as baklava and börek in Middle Eastern and Balkan cuisines. Filo-based pastries are made by layering many sheets of filo brushed with melted butter; the pastry is then baked.
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History[edit]
The current practice of stretching raw dough into paper-thin sheets likely originated in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace during the time of the Ottoman Empire, based on Central Asian and Romano-Byzantine techniques.[1][2] Baklava is probably the earliest dish using filo, and is documented as early as the 13th century.[3]
Preparation[edit]
Filo dough is made with flour, water, and a small amount of oil or white vinegar, though some dessert recipes also call for egg yolks. Homemade filo takes time and skill, requiring progressive rolling and stretching to a single thin and very large sheet. A very big table and a long roller are used, with continual flouring between layers to prevent tearing.
Machines for producing filo pastry were perfected in the 1970s, and have come to dominate the market.[4] Filo for domestic use is widely available from supermarkets, fresh or frozen.
Use[edit]
When using filo to make pastries, the thin layers are made by first rolling out the sheets of dough to the final thickness, then stacking them with melted butter layers; this contrasts with puff pastry and croissant doughs, where the layers of butter are stacked into a thick layer of dough, then folded and rolled out multiple times to produce a laminated dough containing thin layers of dough and fat.
Related methods[edit]
Very thin pastry sheets can also be made by touching lumps of dough to a hot surface, as in the North African malsouka or by cooking very thin batters, as in the South Indian pootharekulu.
Uses[edit]
Filo can be used in many ways: layered, folded, rolled, or ruffled, with various fillings. Notable pastries made with filo include:
- Baklava - Layers of filo with chopped nuts, sweetened and held together with syrup or honey.
- Banitsa - A Bulgarian dish consisting of eggs, cheese and filo baked in the oven.
- Börek - A savory filo pie originally from the Ottoman Empire.
- Bougatsa - A type of Greek breakfast pastry.
- Bülbül yuvası - A Turkish dessert with pistachios and syrup.
- Bundevara - A Serbian sweet pie filled with pumpkin.
- Galaktoboureko - A Greek dessert consisting of filo and semolina custard.
- Gibanica - A Serbian dish made from filo, white cheese, and eggs.
- Kasseropita - A Greek pie made from filo and kasseri cheese.
- Pastizz - A savory pastry from Malta filled with ricotta or mushy peas.
- Spanakopita - A Greek spinach pie.
- Tiropita - A Greek dish similar to Börek, filled with a cheese-egg mixture.
- Zelnik - A savory pie from the Balkans.
Name[edit]
Though filo's roots are in Ottoman cuisine, the English term comes from the Greek name, which means leaf.[5][6]
The Turkish name yufka means both the thin dough used for baklava and börek, and a kind of flatbread, also called sac ekmeği, cooked on a sac, a domed metal plate.[7] The bread form may have been "an early form of filo" since the Kitab Diwan Lughat al-Turk, a dictionary of Turkic dialects by Mahmud Kashgari recorded plated/folded bread as one meaning of the word yuvgha.[citation needed]
Filo is known by a variety of names in ethnic and regional cuisines. Among them are:
- Yufka in Turkish cuisine; there are different sorts of yufka for börek or baklava
- Gollash in Egyptian cuisine
- Petë in Albanian cuisine, and pies made out of it pite or byrek,
- Jufka (pl.) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia for the dough, while leaves are called kore
- Kori za banitsa (pl.) in Bulgaria for the dough, with pastries made from it generically known as banitsa
- Kori (pl.) in the Republic of Macedonia
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Perry, Charles. "The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava", in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (ed. Sami Zubaida, Richard Tapper), 1994. ISBN 1-86064-603-4
- ^ Patrick Faas (2003). Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 185.
- ^ Gülbeşeker: Türk tatlıları tarihi, p. 236, at Google Books
- ^ Press release from Athens Foods, Cleveland, OH
- ^ Oxford Dictionaries.
- ^ Alan Davidson (2014). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-967733-7. p. 307.
- ^ Türk Dil Kurumu, Büyük Türkçe Sözlük search form
Bibliography[edit]
- Perry, Charles. "The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava", in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (ed. Sami Zubaida, Richard Tapper), 1994. ISBN 1-86064-603-4.
- Engin Akın, Mirsini Lambraki, Kosta Sarıoğlu, Aynı Sofrada İki Ülke: Türk ve Yunan Mutfağı, Istanbul 2003, ISBN 975-458-484-2.
External links[edit]
The dictionary definition of filo at Wiktionary
Media related to Phyllo at Wikimedia Commons
Phyllo dough at Wikibook Cookbooks