Ethereally light and crispy layerings of flaky phyllo dough brushed with melted butter and decked out with chopped nuts and oozing, honeyed syrup make baklava one of the world’s most seductive pastries.
Baked in shallow rectangular or round metal pans, the still-warm treat is doused—and thus crisped—with ice-cold sugar syrup or honey. Cut into diamond-shaped portions, it is to be nibbled alongside Turkish tea or coffee, in this case preferably unsugared.
Already a popular dessert in the Topkapi Palace in the sixteenth-century days of the Ottoman sultans, baklava was reported to be one of the favorite treats in the harem known as the House of Felicity (a title perhaps due only in part to the presence of pastries). The dessert evolved over the years, baked in varying forms and with fillings of walnuts, almonds, or pistachios, though always fragrant with cinnamon, lemon rind, and orange blossom water.
One of the most popular riffs on the theme is bourma, known as shredded wheat, a dizzyingly sweet and chewy delight in which shredded phyllo is wrapped around nut fillings before it is baked and drowned in syrup.
Finding fresh baklava is no easy matter, but it’s crucial. Kept too long, the pastry becomes limp and tough and the nuts turn rancid. If not in a reliable restaurant, find good baklava in busy Greek, Turkish, or other Middle Eastern bakeries where turnover is high. Avoid any that is precut and wrapped, boxed, or canned.
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