In the attempt to complete all of the 2021 Bake Off Technical Challenges, welcome to Week 6 of the Bake Off Bake-Along! Week 6 was pastry week, and for the Technical Challenge, Paul asked the bakers to make baklava, a Turkish sweet pastry treat. The original recipe called for making an absolutely massive Baklava in a 30cm tin, so I decided to scale things down a little and make a smaller 22cm version. So check out the recipe and my tips for success below!
What is Baklava?
Baklava is a Turkish sweet pastry treat, although it is often also found in other Middle-Eastern or Arab countries. Having grown up in Germany, I often went to Turkish supermarkets where the front counter at the bakeries was always filled with large displays of different flavoured baklava!
Baklava consist of a crunchy nut filling, sandwiched between multiple layers of flaky filo pastry. The whole thing is then drowned in a sticky syrup rendering this a truly delicious and moreish treat! It is VERY sweet though, and they are intended to be eaten one at a time as sweet treats to serve with coffee or tea.
Paul’s Baklava recipe (you can see the original recipe here) used a mix of pistachios and walnuts for the filling and included some rosewater in the syrup. As nuts (pistachios in particular) and rosewater are quite expensive, I used what I had in the cupboards and opted for a mix of pistachios, walnuts and cashews for the filling, and a French “orange water” (Fleur d’Oranger) for flavouring my filling.
Baklava is an extremely versatile thing to make, so I would recommend doing the same and just using whatever ingredients you have to hand.
How to make (laminated) Filo Pastry
I have actually made filo pastry before – and used it to make Baklava! I created a Baking Post about How to make Filo Pastry, but have not yet got round to posting my Baklava recipe! So Paul’s Technical Challenge one with have to precede that!
Last time I made Baklava, I made a lot of thin sheets of filo and layered them on top of one another, brushing melted butter in between each to make sure they’d create flaky layers in the oven. However, Paul’s recipe calls for folding the pastry to create layers (called lamination), as you would also do with other types of pastry like puff pastry (see here). I think this method was far easier than the one I used and I yielded a great result! I actually thoroughly enjoyed making this!
If there is one thing I learned from making Filo pastry before, it is that cornflour is your friend. Your filo will stick together if you don’t use enough, so be very generous with the cornflour (I’d say there’s almost no such thing as too much cornflour when it comes to this) and you’ll get the result you want!
Picture Guide for Creating the Laminated Filo Pastry + Baklava Assembly
To help you whilst making Paul’s Baklava recipe, I have included a step-by-step picture guide for folding and rolling your filo pastry! I have also shown you how to assemble the baklava, and also tried to include some pictures that you might find helpful when cutting the design into the baklava before baking!
Dust the surface liberally with cornflour! 
Roll into a circle. 
Fold inwards to create a rectangle. 
Fold into a square. 
Fold in the corners. 
Roll out into a circle. 
You can really see the layers created by lamination! 
Roughly trim to the size of the tin. 
Place any trimmings on top. 
Add the nuts after 3 layers of pastry. 
Cut a star design. 
Pour over the butter and leave for 10 minutes for the pastry and filling to absorb it.
More Bake Off Technical Challenges
I am absolutely obsessed with the Great British Bake Off and have challenged myself to attempt all of (or at least the ones that are “realistic” – I won’t be making pitta breads on a camp fire in the back garden!) the technical challenges from the programme! I have tried quite a few already, so make sure you check out some of the other recipes and see how I got on!
- Mary Berry’s Religieuses
- Mary Berry’s Fraisier Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Hand-raised Chicken, Bacon and Apricot Pies
- Mary Berry’s Bakewell Tart with feathered Icing
- Paul’s Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes
- Mary Berry’s Frosted Walnut Layer Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Cottage Loaf
- Mary Berry’s Homemade Jaffa Cakes
- Paul Hollywood’s Wagon Wheel Biscuits
- Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Mini Pork Pies
- Mary Berry’s Viennese Whirls
- Prue’s Vegan Chocolate and Raspberry Tarts (S2UC Special)
- Pizza Star Bread (Junior Bake Off)
- Mary Berry’s Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake
- Paul’s Crusty White Cob
- Paul Hollywood’s Rainbow Bagels
- Prue Leith’s Malt Loaf
- Paul’s Jammy Biscuits
- Paul Hollywood’s Olive Ciabatta Bread Sticks with Homemade Tzatziki
- Prue Leith’s Sticky Toffee Puddings with Sesame Tuiles
- Prue Leith’s Prinzregententorte
- Paul Hollywood’s Baklava (22cm)
- Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bars (Twix)
- Prue Leith’s Vegan Sausage Rolls
- Prue’s Sablé Breton Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Sticky Belgian Buns
- Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
- Prue’s Garibaldi Biscuits with Feathered Chocolate Icing
- Paul Hollywood’s Pain au Raisins
- Paul’s Spicy Beef Tacos
- Paul Hollywood’s S’mores
- Prue Leith’s Pistachio Praline Ice Cream Cones
- Vegetable Spring Rolls
- Prue’s Vertical Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Raspberry Tarts
- Paul Hollywood’s Devonshire Splits
Paul Hollywood’s Baklava | Bake Off Technical Challenge
Recipe
Ingredients:
FOR THE FILO PASTRY
- 375g plain flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 1 large egg
- 130g full-fat Greek yoghurt
- 65ml vegetable oil
- 2 tsp white wine vinegar
- 37g butter, melted
- ~ 200g cornflour, for dusting and rolling
FOR THE SYRUP
- 150g runny honey
- 65g caster sugar
- 100ml cold water
- ½ lemon, cut into wedges
- ½ tbsp rose water (or use orange if you don’t have any)
FOR THE NUT FILLING
- 120g pistachios, roughly chopped
- 150g walnuts, roughly chopped
- 80g cashews, roughly chopped
- 25g caster sugar
- ½ tbsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tbsp ground cardamom
TO ASSEMBLE AND DECORATE
- 200g butter, melted
- 30g pistachios, ground/finely chopped
- Edible rose petals
YOU WILL ALSO NEED
- Rolling pin
- 22cm round spring-clip tin
- Small saucepan
Method:
- To make the filo pastry, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and create a well in the middle. Whisk together the yoghurt, oil, egg, vinegar, and melted butter in a measuring jug, and then pour it into the well in the flour.
- Use your hands to stir and bring the mixture together into a dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until smooth. Divide it into 6 equal portions (around 110g each) and roll each portion into balls. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to rest for 20 minutes.
- In the meantime, measure all the ingredients for the syrup apart from the rose (or orange) water into a small saucepan. Set over a medium heat to allow the sugar and honey to melt and dissolve in the water, then bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and allow the mixture to simmer for 5 minutes to thicken. Remove from the heat and set aside until needed.
- Generously dust a clean work surface and rolling pin with cornflour. I find it easiest to put a large amount of cornflour into a sieve and have it next to me, so that I can continue to add more cornflour whilst I am rolling and folding.
- Take one piece of dough and roll as thinly as you can (around 2mm), trying to make it into a rough circle. Generously dust with cornflour, then fold the right side into the centre, followed by the left side, so that the ends meet and you have a rough rectangle.
- Dust the dough with cornflour again, and fold the pastry from the bottom and top into the centre for the ends to meet. The pastry should now be a square shape.
- Dust again with more cornflour and fold the four corners of the square into the centre to make a smaller square. Turn the pastry over so that the seams are facing down, and leave to rest covered with a tea towel for 15 minutes.
- Repeat steps 4-7 with the remaining 5 pieces of filo pastry.
- To prepare the filling, roughly chop up the nuts and mix them with the caster sugar, cinnamon and cardamom. Set aside until needed.
- Once the filo pastry squares have rested, generously dust the worksurface with cornflour again. Roll one piece of dough into a circle that is roughly 22cm in diameter (use your tin as a guide) and 2-3mm thick. Place the tin on top of the pastry and run a sharp knife around it to cut out a filo pastry disk. Place the filo pastry disk at the bottom of your tin, then lay the offcuts on top so that no pastry goes to waste.
- Repeat this with 2 more filo pastry squares. Then add the prepared nut filling over the pastry and spread it out in an even layer.
- Roll out, trim, and assemble the remaining three filo pastry sheets over the nut filling as described above. For the last layer, place the trimmings on before adding the final filo pastry disk, so that there are no trimmings at the top and you have a nice flat surface.
- Use a sharp knife to cut a star design into the top of the pastry, slicing all the way through the layers to the base of the tin. You can use the pictures above as a guide, but start by cutting the baklava into 8 equal wedges (like you would cut a cake), then cut 2 parallel lines into each wedge, followed by 2 parallel lines going in the opposite direction to create a diamond shape. The pictures above will hopefully help explain.
- Pour the melted butter over the top of the baklava, making sure it is evenly distributed. Leave the baklava to stand for 10 minutes to absorb all of the butter, whilst preheating the oven to 170°C/150°C fan.
- Bake the baklava in the preheated oven for 1 hour, or until the pastry is crisp and golden on top. Remove the lemon wedges from the syrup and pour it over the baklava while it is still hot. You can then decorate the top (making a pattern if you wish) with some finely chopped pistachios and edible rose petals.
- Leave the baklava to cool completely in the tin before slicing.
