Baklava Pastries

Bakalava is Turkish in origin and combines nuts and honey in between layers of flaky pastry, which usually would be paper thin sheets of filo. Recently I have been baking like mad.....in the mornings making flaky Danish pastries and then in the sunny spring evenings fervently making glossy Italian meringues for macarons (my fourth batch). I'm beginning to think that macarons are cursed, because tray after tray has come out like eggy pancakes or ones where the feet have blown. I am still currently investigating the causes of their demise, rather like the chef version of Poirot and will do a post on macaron problems at a later date. 

The one thing that has been going well however, has been my Danish pastries. I made savoury Danish pastries using the exact same dough in March which you can see here. 

The dough is perfectly flaky and inside lies a gooey, sweet, nutty baklava inspired filling. I used all the traditional Turkish* baklava: pistachios, walnuts, almonds, honey and a bit of melted butter. I added my own little extras, rose water (a bit more of an Persian addition) and orange zest which went wonderfully. The only small error I made was going a bit heavy on the orange. 

*There seem to be many regional variations of baklava..the Black Sea region of Turkey using hazelnuts in their baklava, as well as in other countries like Armenia adding cloves and cinnamon and Iran using cardamom and a rose water. 

If you want to fill these with something more traditional, I'd recommend using small balls of marzipan on which you can place an apricot (ones from the tin in syrup are best), or you can go for mincemeat or chocolate or simply jam or conserve. 

Baklava Inspired Danish Pastries 

Makes 8

For the Danish dough: 

110g/4oz strong bread flour
110g/4oz plain flour
110ml warm milk 
110g/4oz butter
1 egg, beaten (plus extra egg wash to seal and glaze) 
15g caster sugar 
15g fresh yeast (or dried yeast) 
A pinch of salt 

For the baklava filling: 

50g pistachios

50g walnuts

15g flaked almonds

3 tbsp honey

Zest of half a small orange

1 tbsp melted butter

A few drops of rose water 

To glaze: 

3 tbsp apricot jam 

Glace icing 

1. Sieve both flours into a bowl along with the salt. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk, whisk the egg and sugar together and add both liquids into a well in the flour. 

2. Mix to a soft dough and roll out onto a try lined with clingfilm (approx 15 X 30cm)  and cover with another layer of clingfilm. Leave to rest for 15-20mins. 

3. Put the butter in between a sheet of grease proof paper and roll with a rolling pin until it is able to cover two thirds of your dough. Turn this upside down and adhere it to your dough by pressing and ensuring contact of the butter, smoothing the grease proof paper down. Put any butter still clinging onto the grease proof paper onto the dough. 

4. Fold the top flap down into the center, followed by the bottom flap, and then into half again. So, bold flaps to the middle and then half again. Pinch the edges in to seal in the butter and put in the fridge for 20 minutes. If you want some more information about laminated doughs, check out my post here. 

5. Repeat the above process by rolling out the dough again into a rectangle as before, and fold into three. Do this two more times, giving a total of three single turns, resting for 20 minutes in between. 

6. In between turns, make the filling. Blitz the pistachios and walnuts in a food processor until fine (not a paste or powder, but in small pieces) and mix in the other ingredients. 

7. Preheat oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas Mark 6. Cut the dough into half and roll one half to 1/8th inch thick/3mm and cut into 8cm squares, adding a little flour if it is sticking. Egg wash around the edge of each one. 

8. Shape as you wish, and put on a large baking tray lined with grease proof paper. Repeat with the second half of dough. 

9. Egg wash again before baking and bake for 10 minutes, before lowering the over temperature to 180C/160C Fan/Gas Mark 4 for a further 15-20 minutes, until golden and crisp. Leave to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. 

10. To finish, heat the apricot jam in a small saucepan until hot and runny, pass through a fine wire mesh to get rid of any lumps and brush your danishes with this. This will make them look infinitely better and shinier if you thought they looked a bit plain at this stage. Finish off by drizzling glace icing over (simply icing sugar and water mixed until thick but not too thick that it cannot be piped over).