Focus on filo

Filo, stemming from the Greek word for leaf, is a particularly apt name for this thin and flaky pastry. It is made from a mixture of flour, salt, water, and oil that is combined, kneaded and then stretched (traditionally by hand) until it is transparent enough to almost see through. These paper-thin sheets are then placed one on top of each other, glued together by a thin coating of melted butter or oil, to form a multi-layered pastry shell to fill, roll and layer into a whole host of delicious dishes.

You would be forgiven for thinking that filo pastry was originally a Greek invention – what with its Greek name and the country’s myriad of filo-based pies, such as spanakopita – however its origins lie further east. Layered breads have a long and illustrious history in the Middle East, perhaps spanning back as far as the ancient Egyptians. In the medieval period, nomadic tribes in modern day Turkey created layered breads by rolling sheets of dough into ultra-thin layers. This very rudimental form of filo pastry was later adapted into a more complex dish, adding the Persian staple of nuts to make an early form of baklava.

The wafer-thin pastry we have come to know as filo was subsequently developed in the royal Ottoman kitchens of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. In fact, filo pastry became so entrenched in Turkish high society that up until the breakout of the First World War, all upper class Istanbul kitchens employed two filo makers – one solely dedicated to making the thinner filo required for baklava and another specifically for the preparation of the stronger filo pastry for börek.

Traditional filo-based pastry dishes aren’t just confined to Turkey and Greece though. Versions of this delicately crisp pastry have also made their way into the kitchens of central and eastern Europe in the form of the strudel pastry, and further afield as the paper-thin werqa or warka used in North African dishes such as the Moroccan meat pie dish bisteeya and hand-held briouats.