Baklava Baku: a little history and little secrets of cooking

Do you know what baklava is? This is a famous oriental delicacy with a walnut layer, a favorite dish of kings and sultans. This batch has a lot of tastes and names: Armenian, honey, flaky, Turkish, Baklava Baku, etc. Spicy walnut cake though has a lot of names and tastes, but they all have a multilayeredness. This is the main difference from the rest of the baking.

Eastern dessert is the pearl of the Ottoman Empire. He is loved and trained in different countries of the world. For example, in 2008, a giant Baklava Baku was cooked by confectioners at the Navruz holiday in Azerbaijan. The cooks had to work a whole week to cook the baked goods, 350 kilograms of flour and powdered sugar, seven thousand chicken eggs, about 25 kg of almonds and hazelnuts were left for her. Sweet delicacy turned twelve meters long and three meters wide, it was tried by more than 15,000 people. This is the biggest bakery that was recorded in the record book of the CIS countries and Russia.

History of origin

The first culinary recipe for a thin dough for baklava came from the Assyrians. This recipe immediately received a historic mention - not every dish can "boast" like that. In the old culinary book of the times of Fatih (now it is in the museum of Ottoman sultans) there is an entry according to which the first baklava was made in 1453 by the court chef of the Sultan. This sweet dessert was so pleasing to him that he ordered the cook to bake this dish for every holiday.

But this is only one of the versions of its origin. According to other sources, Baklava Baku is a native of Turkey, it was started there in the 8th century BC. Previously, it was called "baklava", it was baked from a coarse dough, but this was until the recipe became popular in Europe. Greek chefs began to make the dough more delicate and crumbly, thereby giving the eastern sweetness a piquant taste and appetizing appearance.

Today every Eastern woman has her own unique recipe for this recipe. To make baklava delicious, the dough for its preparation is rolled very thinly. For this, special rolls made of mulberry wood are used. Their length reaches three meters. In the east, local bakers turn the procedure of preparation of delicacies into a mass spectacle - it is very interesting to observe how masterfully they are managed with giant rolling pins.

Thus, the dough sheets are rolled out many times to make it literally transparent. For the filling is taken almonds, walnuts, pistachios, they are grinded or finely chopped, and then boiled in honey sauce, there are added spicy spices. When the filling cools down, it is neatly laid out between the dough layers, which are pre-lubricated with butter.

In each country a delicacy is prepared according to an individual recipe, for this purpose a variety of fillings, seasonings, spices and dough are used. Despite the different methods of baking and the ratio of ingredients, the recipe has its own inalienable and mandatory rules that must be adhered to.

Home cooking recommends baking baklava only in a metal tray of low shape, which is densely filled with dough. Appearance of treats resembles a closed cake. Bake it in two batches to add butter. After baklava is baked, it is poured with syrup to give a thin spicy taste, and cut directly into a baking sheet. A special taste is given to the nut filling, which is prepared in several ways.

The first is simple

Walnuts are peeled off beforehand, after pouring boiling water, then very shallow to form an oily mass. In the end, it adds sugar powder, cardamom and cinnamon (the ratio of spices depends on the formulation). The result is a marzipan mass.

The second type is complex

In the nut-and-sugar filling introduce crushed cookies. A raw egg is taken, protein is separated from it, whipped with sugar, similar actions are performed with yolk. Ready-made whipped mass is also admixed to the filling.

Lazy Baklava Baku

This recipe is quite simple, it is, of course, far from the classical one, but still the taste of the delicacy turns out to be very pleasant, every housewife can cook it.

200 gr. Softened cream butter with three glasses of sifted flour, add a glass of sour cream, knead the dough and leave in the cold for an hour. While the dough cools, prepare the filling: 100 gr. Sugar, egg, chopped walnuts (200 grams), cardamom (3 boxes) - all mixed together.

We pull out the cooled dough, divide it into two equal parts and very thinly roll it out. The first layer is laid out in a mold, greased with its stuffing and covered with a second sheet. The formed closed cake is cut into rhombuses, we send it to the oven for about forty minutes (at 180 ° C). After this time, the baklava is pulled out and poured with honey sauce: dilute the glass of boiled water with boiled water (50 grams) and cook until thick.