Fun With Filo (Phyllo) Dough
Americans are enjoying a love affair with Mediterranean cooking - a cuisine that tastes great and is healthy. Increased usage of MidEastern Filo (or Phyllo) dough is one result of this interest. “Filo” is Greek for “leaf” and refers to a paper-thin pastry made largely of flour, water, and salt. Most Americans have experienced filo as the pastry covering either the spinach appetizers called spanokopita or the Greek dessert, baklava.
Home cooks have discovered Filo for two reasons. It makes a great substitute for puff pastry and strudel doughs – doughs that are difficult to make at home and associated with high fat. While Filo is also difficult to make from scratch, quality frozen filo dough is now readily available at the grocery store. Further, filo can be used with a minimal amount of fat just as easily as it can become a rich, sumptuous bite.
Taking some time to practice with Filo will reward you many times. Filo’s flexibility is impressive. It can enclose a huge variety of fillings, both savory and sweet. It can be assembled in a variety of forms like cones, tubes, pie shells, pizza crusts, pouches, roles, strudels, or triangles. It can be cut easily to make bite-sized appetizers or left large to make a strudel. It can act as a pastry wrapping for such varied foods as Beef Wellington or heated Brie cheese. The assembled but unbaked pastry will freeze beautifully; it is then baked from the frozen state.
The challenges of Filo dough are threefold. First, if not defrosted properly, the pastry sheets can stick together. Secondly, the pastry dries out rapidly. Finally, the sheets are paper-thin and tear easily. But proper handling and some practice will make these problems manageable.
The standard one pound box of Filo available at the store contains twenty 14” x 18” sheets. Also occasionally available is a box with twenty-eight sheets measuring 12” x 17”. Hopefully, the shipper and store have maintained the box in a frozen state so none of the sheets stick together. However, as a matter of caution, if I’m making a recipe that requires all 20 sheets, I will always buy a second box. It is very easy to use up filo dough by making extra or other recipes (a quick apple strudel is detailed below), and then freezing the surplus for future use.
Once brought home, the frozen dough should either be defrosted overnight in the refrigerator (preferable) or left at room temperature for 5 hours. Some recipes give microwave defrosting instructions – heat for one minute at a very low power like “3”- but I don’t find this method to be reliable. Since defrosted filo lasts 4 weeks in the refrigerator, you can purchase the dough well in advance.
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