Skiathos baklava

Ο baklava is the most popular of the cakes but also the most difficult to prepare. It consists of many thin sheets of dough, filled with almonds, walnuts, pistachios and hazelnuts, flavored with cinnamon and cloves, flower water and rose water. Pastries filled with nuts were known in antiquity, with the more classic "Cretan gastrin" - a mixture of nuts, poppy seeds, honey and black pepper between two leaves of sesame honey -, which is considered the ancestor of today's baklava.

An version of it was presented by the archaeologist and author of the book "The language of taste" Marianna Kavroulaki at the 2013nd Gastronomy Symposium in Amari, Crete, in XNUMX.

In Byzantium, the hull evolves into the cutter. However, a decisive station for its current form is the palace cuisine of Istanbul, when baklavas with hundreds of leaves spring up in the kitchens of Topkapi. In Greece, the Giannioti baklava is interesting, with the musky aroma of Epirus butter.

Η Skiathos has its own baklava, which came to the island with the refugees from Asia Minor in 1922. It is the sweet of the holiday and especially weddings, where guests are offered a piece of baklava.

Ο Skiathos baklava It is made in a low round pan (sini) with a diameter of 50-65 points, where up to fifty handmade thin sheets of dough, fresh butter and almond chips are spread in succession. After baking in the oven, pour the syrup.

Alternatively, the baklava of Skiathos is made with walnuts and cloves. The opening of the leaves is very interesting, because it is done in the hands by rotating in the air, and not with a rolling pin, and of course it requires experience and technique.

The interest in both cases of baklava is the cutting pattern and how the surface of the round pan is transformed into many small diamond-shaped pieces.