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Fillo & Kataifi |
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HISTORICALLY
Fillo or fillo dough was also known as (Greek φúλλo 'leaf') consists of paper-thin sheets of raw, unleavened flour dough. The Turkish name for phyllo is yufka, though there is also a Turkish flatbread named yufka.
Fillo may be of ancient origin. Apicius (Apicius is the title of a collection of Roman cookery recipes, usually thought to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD) records dishes constructed from sheets of unleavened bread, separated by layers of ingredients such as chicken, pine nuts and goats-cheese, but it does not describe the butter-layering technique, which is essential for the crisp puffing. As early as the 11th century, a dictionary of Turkish dialects (Diwan Lughat al-Turk) recorded pleated/folded bread as one meaning of the word yuvgha, which is related to the word (yufka). The idea of stretching raw dough into paper-thin sheets is a later development, probably developed in the kitchens of the Topkapi palace.
Fillo and yufka are used in many of the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire. The individual sheets are layered with butter and other ingredients, then baked to make flaky pies and pastries, including baklava, spanakopita, tyropita, bstilla, and börek. Rolled out dough layers are also used for güllaç, a Turkish dessert mostly eaten in the holy month of Ramadan.
In Greek cuisine they are called pittas (pies) and in Turkish cuisine these pastries are called börek, in Egyptian cuisine they are called gollash, in Albanian cuisine they are called byrek, in Austrian-German-Hungarian cuisine the dough is called Blätterteig and pastries made from phyllo are called strudel. In Bosnia, the word burek is only used for the pastries with meat and other kinds are called pita. In Serbian language phyllo is called kore (plural) while the pastries have various names, depending on mode of preparation. In Bulgaria the dough is called kori za banitsa (plural.) and the generic name for the pastries is banitsa, although there are special names for some specific kinds.
History of fillo from other reference sources
"Filo is the Greek name for a dough of many paper-thin layers separated by films of butter...Although known to Europeans and North Americans by a Greek name, the dough is clearly of Turkish origin. The medieval nomad Turks had an obsessive interest in making layered bread, possibly in emulation of the thick oven breads of city people. As early as the 11th century, a dictionary of Turkish dialects (Diwan Lughat al-Turk) recorded pleated/folded bread as one meaning of the word yuvgha, which is related to the word (yufka) which means a single sheet of file in modern Turkish. This love of layering continues among the Turks of Central Asia...The idea of making the sheets paper thins is a later development. The Azerbaijanis make the usual sort of baklava with 50 or so layers of filo, but they also make a...pastry called Baki pakhlavasi (Baku-style baklava) using ordinary noodle paste instead of filo...This may represent the earliest form of baklava, resulting form the Turkish nomads adapting their concept of layered bread--developed in the absence of ovens...If this is so, baklava actually pre-dated filo, and the paper-thin pastry we know today was probably an innovation of the Ottoman sultan's kitchens at Topkapi palace in Istanbul. There is an established connection between the Topkapi kitchens and baklava; on the 15th of Ramadan every year, the Janissary troops stationed in Istanbul used to march to the palace, where every regiment was presented with two trays of baklava. They would...march back to their barracks in what was known as the Baklava Procession."
***Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 299)
"[Syrian] baklava are renowned throughout the Near East. Some (called kol wa shkor) are made with extremely thin layers of filo pastry and have different shapes. Others are made with a type of birds nest' pastry, shaped in cylinders, called borma...All are filled with a mixture of nuts (pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios can all be used), sugar, and rose or orange blossom water, baked, and then coated with sugar syrup."
***Oxford Companion to Food (p. 446)
"Persians, renowned patissiers since antiquity, invented the diamond-shaped Baklava which contained a nut stuffing perfumed with jasmine or pussy willow blossoms. In the sixth century the sweetmeat was introduced to the Byzantine court of Justinian I at Constantinople, where they Greeks discovered phyllo (thin pastry) and adopted the dessert which they serve today on New Year's and other joyous occasions."
***The Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking though the Ages, [American Heritage:New York] 1968 (p. 690)
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