Today was the long-awaited day: making baklava with Edvina! Now, I had made baklava a few times in the US and it was considered very impressive...but that involved pre-made phyllo. This time, we were making it from scratch!
(The full truth is that Edvina actually made the dough for us, since it needs to rest a few hours, but she did give me the recipe and I'm confident I can do it!)
I arrived this morning to find little balls of dough on the table. We rolled them out with a long pin (Edvina's is like a broomstick; she says mine has too large a diameter) to disks about 8" in diameter. They seemed quite thin at that point, but that was just the beginning!
The disks were stacked together with intervening dusting of corn starch. When our first 25 balls had been rolled, we started on the stack of disks. The stack was rolled to about 12" in diameter, and then stacks of 4 or 5 were then wrapped around the pins for further rolling. Each little ball of dough (starting with a diameter of maybe an inch and a half) ended up about 16-18" in diameter. That's some rolling!
Edvina stacked the dough sheets into a pan, drizzling them with clarified browned butter. More layers (all 25), then a crumbling of nuts and cinnamon.
Next batch! Twenty-five more balls, another set of layers, and more nuts. Then the last batch of pastry sheets. This is enough work to send most people to the chiropractor, believe me. Cut, pour the remaining butter over the pastry, then shove in the oven at 200°C for almost an hour and a half.
And nuts? One pan of baklava required over TWO POUNDS of shelled walnuts. This is not an inexpensive delicacy, believe me.
I was sent home with the warm baklava, and I'm on my own for the syrup part of the endeavor. I think I'm up to the challenge of making everything in the house sticky.
Love,
Alexandra
(The full truth is that Edvina actually made the dough for us, since it needs to rest a few hours, but she did give me the recipe and I'm confident I can do it!)
I arrived this morning to find little balls of dough on the table. We rolled them out with a long pin (Edvina's is like a broomstick; she says mine has too large a diameter) to disks about 8" in diameter. They seemed quite thin at that point, but that was just the beginning!
The disks were stacked together with intervening dusting of corn starch. When our first 25 balls had been rolled, we started on the stack of disks. The stack was rolled to about 12" in diameter, and then stacks of 4 or 5 were then wrapped around the pins for further rolling. Each little ball of dough (starting with a diameter of maybe an inch and a half) ended up about 16-18" in diameter. That's some rolling!
Edvina stacked the dough sheets into a pan, drizzling them with clarified browned butter. More layers (all 25), then a crumbling of nuts and cinnamon.
Next batch! Twenty-five more balls, another set of layers, and more nuts. Then the last batch of pastry sheets. This is enough work to send most people to the chiropractor, believe me. Cut, pour the remaining butter over the pastry, then shove in the oven at 200°C for almost an hour and a half.
And nuts? One pan of baklava required over TWO POUNDS of shelled walnuts. This is not an inexpensive delicacy, believe me.I was sent home with the warm baklava, and I'm on my own for the syrup part of the endeavor. I think I'm up to the challenge of making everything in the house sticky.
Love,
Alexandra
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