Pie and Pastry Bible (102 page)

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Or a cushioned baking sheet or 2 baking sheets placed one on top of the other, without parchment.

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Or a cushioned baking sheet or 2 baking sheets placed one on top of the other, without parchment.

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The scraps can be rerolled by pressing them together and giving them 2 turns, then rolling the dough into a square. Cut into 2 triangles.

FILLO

F
illo (FEElo)—also spelled phyllo—strudel, and puff pastry are all members of the pastry leaf family. In fact, the word
fillo
means leaf in Greek. Its origins go back over two thousand years to Persia, Turkey, and Egypt. It has been speculated that the first fillo pastry was baklava, created in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Fillo traveled to Hungary, where it became the base for strudel. This type of pastry is considered to be the mother of French puff pastry. There is a profound relationship between these three pastries.

I once enjoyed a pastry case filled with seafood at a restaurant in New York City called Capsuto
Fræres,
owned by three charming Egyptian brothers. The pastry seemed like the lightest puff pastry I had ever experienced. Intrigued, I asked one of the
fræres
and was embarrassed to discover that it was not puff pastry at all, but fillo. I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself though, because on analyzing the doughs, I realized that the light flaky layers of both doughs are, in fact, made of the same elements, but created in different ways. For puff pastry, the butter is rolled into thin sheets between layers and folds of dough; for fillo, the dough is pulled very thin and the butter, which is melted and clarified, is then brushed on each layer, together with a sprinkling of sugar and/or ground nuts or bread crumbs to keep them separate during baking. (Using unclarified butter for fillo would keep it from being as crisp. The opposite is true for puff pastry, where the water in the unclarified butter is
needed
to create steam to separate the layers.)

If the equivalent amount of flour used for puff pastry were used to make fillo, and the dough cut to the same finished size and then stacked, there would be 76 separate layers. Though mathematically (and microscopically) puff pastry given 6 turns has 729 layers, these layers are not distinct and separate as are the fillo layers, so the fillo is lighter and crisper. Layers of butter-brushed fillo can, therefore, be
used in place of puff pastry in, for example, the Classic Napoleon (page 457). Use 20 layers of fillo to replace puff pastry rolled ¼ inch thick.

The dough to which the Greek fillo has the closest kinship is the Austro/ Hungarian strudel. They both consist of the same ingredients: unbleached flour, salt, water, and oil (some recipes for each include eggs or egg whites; I find the dough more tender without them). If both are handmade, the only perceptible difference comes from the type of flour used and how thin the dough is pulled (or rolled, as is the case with authentic fillo). The greater difference comes from the fact that if you want a large sheet of strudel dough, you have to make it yourself, whereas commercial machine-made fillo dough can be purchased.
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Handmade strudel dough, using about 10 ounces of flour, if stretched to 48 inches and trimmed, weighs about 7 ounces. The equivalent amount of fillo, for a 16-inch roll, would be six 12- by 17-inch sheets, which weigh about 3.5 ounces—or half the weight of the strudel dough. The actual difference in surface area is that the fillo is 67.6 percent that of the strudel, not 50 percent; this means it will result in both slightly thinner and fewer layers or leaves. The reason is that commercial fillo is slightly stronger than handmade, so less can be used, but it won’t be as tender. The main difference between fillo and strudel is what they are used to make. In fact, they can be used interchangeably. To make a large strudel, for example, sheets of commercial fillo can be overlapped (see page 393).

I find using thawed frozen fillo dough to be very frustrating unless I have frozen it myself from the fresh. That is because many markets allow it to thaw and then refreeze during the stocking process. This causes it to stick together and tear when one attempts to separate the sheets. The best results are achieved when the frozen fillo is allowed to defrost refrigerated overnight, but if the fillo has thawed and refrozen, even this won’t help. Fortunately, excellent fresh fillo sheets, cups, and shredded fillo can be ordered by mail from The Fillo Factory in Dumont, New Jersey (see page 675). The fresh fillo keeps refrigerated for two months and can be refrozen twice. It separates readily into sheets and does not dry out while working with it nearly as quickly as the store-bought frozen. It is a joy to work with and after you have experienced it, there is no going back! I prefer using these precut sheets of fillo to pulling my own strudel for shaped pastries, as opposed to rolled ones, as it is easier to handle than cutting the enormous gossamer-thin sheet of strudel.

The finest and most fragile of all the leaf-type pastries is
warka,
or
pâte à Brique,
from Morocco. The ingredients are identical to fillo, though instead of
cup of water it requires ½ cup. The technique, however, is astoundingly different: Instead of being rolled or stretched, the sheets are formed by touching the dough briefly and repeatedly to the back of a heated lightly oiled pan to create the most gossamer-thin layer imaginable. Each small fine leaf of dough is then painstakingly peeled off the hot pan. I saw this dough demonstrated by master
baker Esther McManus at a meeting of The Baker’s Dozen East, and we were all awestruck. She has a school (Cuisine Ecole) in Philadelphia, so should you desire to learn this method, I heartily recommend a class with her. She is an inspired and generous baker and teacher—and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to learn this dough from even the best instructions in a book.

POINTERS FOR SUCCESS IN WORKING WITH FILLO

Fresh fillo is easiest to work with, but whether it is fresh or thawed, be sure to keep it covered with plastic wrap and a damp towel to prevent drying.

If using frozen fillo, defrost it for a minimum of 8 hours, preferably 24 hours, and a maximum of 3 days in the refrigerator and then let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours.

One pound of frozen fillo contains about 22 to 24 sheets about 12 inches by 16 to 17 inches (each one weighs about 0.66 ounce/18 grams). (Fresh fillo has 25 to 31 sheets to a pound, as it is slightly thinner. Each weighs about 0.57 ounce/16 grams.)

Lay the stack of fillo on a dry counter. Remove the amount needed and refrigerate or freeze the rest as soon as possible, rerolled and double-wrapped in plastic wrap, preferably Saran.

Use 1 to 2 teaspoons of clarified butter for each sheet of fillo. Alternatively, for savory fillings, use olive oil spray or olive oil, or a combination of olive oil and butter. Butter produces the crispest texture.

Using clarified butter prevents spotting, uneven browning, and sogginess, but it’s fine just to melt the butter, as the milk solids and liquid will sink to the bottom, leaving the clarified butter on the top. For true clarified butter, estimate a maximum of half the weight of the fillo in butter, but start with a little extra, as you lose one quarter of the weight when clarifying it.