Treading on Thin Filo

My announcement that I’m making baklava this week has created excitement among a demographic that I fear: people in places like Greece and Turkey who really, really know good baklava. To these hopeful folks, all I can say is: please lower your expectations. The odds that I’m going to produce a world-class batch of baklava this week are nil, mostly because I won’t be making my own filo dough (yes friends, I’ll be buying it…those of you who are outraged, please throw your rocks now).

Why not? The most honest answer is because I don’t know how. The other answer is because I try to strike a certain balance here on joepastry.com, between authenticity and achievability. Which is to say, I like to keep things challenging for people who want to bake along, but not so much so that the complexity of the techniques become off-putting or the ingredients impossible to find. That takes all the fun out of life. Store-bought filo is a standard here in the States (and, I expect, a lot of other places), so I’ll do the best I can with it.

That said, should one or two of you die-hard authenticity buffs out there want to supply me with grandma’s homemade filo recipe, I’ll do my best to work with it.