Hi I’m Amy Riolo. Today, we’re making almond baklava and I’m going to show how to actually assemble the baklava.
The first thing that we need to do before putting the baklava together is to clarify our butter. Now what that means is, that you take unsalted butter in this case, it’s two sticks, that’s one cup of unsalted butter and you melt it over the stove. What happens when you melt the butter over the stove is all of these white milk solids come to the top. Now, we want to get rid of these milk solids because what happens is they make the browning uneven and they also have a less rich taste. So we just want to get to the very pure golden butter, so all that we have to do is once that butter is melted is just take a spoon and skim off the milk solids. It’s very easy. It’s very unscientific and it only takes a few minutes.
So this is the process if you ever see clarified butter in any recipe and you will when you’re doing things like doughs, things that really you want to have an even browning. And it’s even good to do for things like stews and rice, a lot of different cuisines called for clarified butter. Gives you a nice thick, rich, pure buttery taste without any of the stuff that you don’t want.
Now, in some recipes, if it calls for that you don’t do it, it’s not the end of the world. But in baklava, it’s really important. It’s really something that you want to do for culture, for tradition, for taste and also for even browning. So that’s just what we’re doing is skimming off these solids and it only takes a few minutes here. I wanted to tell you, always want to use unsalted butter. Because that really in this kinds of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean recipes, they don’t put a lot of salt in their sweets. In American recipes, they tend to put a little bit of salt to balance our sugar. But in this part of the world they don’t, so make sure that you use unsalted butter for the recipe. You can also, people ask me if they can use ghee or the Indian clarified butter that’s available ready in the stores and you can. However, it’s important to keep in mind with the ghee that that’s—yes, it is clarified butter but it’s an aged clarified butter, so it’s going to have a stronger even more rich taste. And if you’re not familiar with ghee, I would suggest you actually tasting it before you go ahead and just blindly use it in your recipe. But as you can see, this just took a few minutes, so it’s very easy for us to do and this is what it looks like at the end. You see, you’ve got mostly golden on the top and this is what you want to have in your recipe is this golden butter.
Now, we can actually go ahead and move over and start working with our phyllo dough. I know a lot of people are very intimidated by phyllo dough, but it’s actually very easy to use and if you make a mistake, it’s no problem because you’ve got your butter, which is going to act like a glue and fuse everything together. So even if your phyllo dough breaks a little bit, it’s fine. But there are some practical things that you need to know before you work with phyllo dough. For example, you need to thaw it in a room temperature for two hours before you use it. And what that means is you buy your package and you can if you’re not going to use it for awhile, all you can do is just store it in your refrigerator, it’s very easy. And then when you are going to use it, take it out and set it on your counter for two hours and then go ahead and use it. And what you’ll do is you open it up and you’ll get what looks like this. The phyllo leaves are rolled up, it’s also important to know that there are different thicknesses of phyllo dough that you can find. In a lot of regular supermarkets across America, they just sell one thickness and it might not say which number it is. But if you go to a Greek or Middle Eastern or Mediterranean store, it’s going to say number four, number seven or number 10.
For baklava, you’ll be looking for number four, because number four is the most fine, it’s the thinness and it’s the one with kind of the most refined, most upscale kind of attitude. When you get to number seven and number 10, those are thicker kind of rustic country style phyllo doughs and you don’t want for baklava although they’re wonderful for other recipes. So we’re working with number four, and another thing, if you’re scared about working with number four and if you’d worked with phyllo dough and you’ve a bad experience in the past, start with number seven because it’s a little bit thicker. It will give you more control with the phyllo dough and then once you’re used to it, you can go back to the number four and use that again.
So we’ll set that aside and then I’ll show you how to prepare the phyllo dough for the pan because they also come in different widths. The phyllo dough comes in different widths, and you want to make sure that you’re using one which is suitable for your pan. If not, you can just very easily cut it and that’s what I’m going to show you how to do today is to trim the phyllo dough. So you just put your pan over the top and then you make a little mark with your knife going right down the sides and across the top and then you can remove your pan and actually make a deeper incision and then cut the phyllo dough. So that you’re only using the part that fits the pan and that makes your job much more simple.
And you can remove this portion of the phyllo dough and actually reserve it for another use. I definitely would not throw it away because it’s wonderful to use for appetizers or for other desserts or if you’ve ever had the spinach and cheese turnovers or the meat turnovers. I even use things like leftover beans or leftover mixes that I have from other recipes and put them in here. And you can use pie filling and have a very quick little dessert in no time, and you would just wrap these in plastic wrap and then keep them in your refrigerator. So you put a piece of plastic underneath and then roll it this way and continue rolling it. As you roll it, it will stay like that in your refrigerator for a long time. You can leave it up to a month. That’s no problem.
And most of these packaged baklava sheets, phyllo sheets have about 28 sheets per box. So this is a very simple one, but we all have to is just layer the phyllo dough in our pan. And we start out by putting a little bit of our clarified butter with a pastry brush on the bottom of our pan. And people spend a lot of time on this, and they really worry about it but you can be very quick and you don’t have to be too careful. Also interesting, people worry about the phyllo dough getting dried, and that is a concern if you think you’re going to be answering the phone or going to talk to your neighbor or doing something like that while you’re making it, you want to keep the plastic wrap over the top. But if you’re going to do the recipe straight away like we are, you don’t have to be worried. You take a sheet, you put it up and over and into the pan and you just layer across evenly, you’ll have a little rip, a little rip here, it’s no problem. Because as you can see, once that butter hits it, it just fuses right down, so if you are worried about tearing or ripping phyllo dough and that was what causing you not to make baklava. You can see now that it’s so simple and you don’t have to worry about that. This is our second sheet, we’re going to layer it right over the first and we’re going to continue layering with butter.
Now, one of the things that’s interesting to know about baklava is that it originated in Persia but it was actually an imitation of a Chinese dessert that was made with pastry leaves. And eventually, it made its way to Armenia. The Armenians we’re the people who introduced it to Turkey because a lot of people think that it originated in Turkey. And Turkey was a very important place for baklava but it didn’t originate there. The Armenians introduced it. It was originally a Lenten dessert and the original name of baklava, bakihova means Lenten sweet. So the Armenians were using a much more humble version of baklava than what we’re using. It had less sugar and less expensive ingredients in it but it had 40 sheets of phyllo dough. One sheet for each of the days of Lent and then they gave this recipe to the Turks and the Turks really elevated it because it was introduced into the palace kitchens and they had more access to a lot of expensive ingredients like butter and sugar. Sugar is very expensive at that time, it is important to remember that up until the 1700s and Louie the 15th time in France, sugar was not readily available commodity and even France only used it in apothecaries. So the Turks have a ton of it and they made this very rich very—dessert at a time when sugar was very scarce. And little by little with Ottoman Empire, it got introduced into the rest of the Mediterranean and the rest of the Middle East where it’s a traditional sweet today.
So, we’re going to keep layering until we have 14 sheets. And then when we come back, we’ll show you how to fill our baklava and continue assembling it.
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