Baklava

Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry featured in many cuisines in the area once controlled by the former Ottoman Empire, in Central Asia and in the lands in between. It and its variants are thus popular in Turkey, the Balkans, Cyprus, much of the Arab world, Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and the lands of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. It is a pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey.

History

The history of baklava is not well-documented; it has been claimed by many ethnic groups, the best evidence is that it is of Central Asian Turkic origin, with its current form being developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace.

Vryonis (1971) identified the ancient Greek gastris, kopte, kopton, or koptoplakous, mentioned in the Deipnosophistae, as baklava, and calls it a "Byzantine favorite". However, Perry (1994) shows that though gastris contained a filling of nuts and honey, it did not include any dough; instead, it involved a honey and ground sesame mixture similar to modern pasteli or halva.

Perry then assembles evidence to show that layered breads were created by Turkic peoples in Central Asia, and argues that the "missing link" between the Central Asian folded or layered breads (which did not include nuts) and modern phyllo-based pastries like baklava is the Azerbaijani dish Bakı pakhlavası, which involves layers of dough and nuts. The traditional Uzbek puskal or yupka and Tatar yoka, sweet and salty savories (boreks) prepared with 10-12 layers of dough, are other early examples of layered dough style in Turkic regions.

The thin phyllo dough as used today was probably developed in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace. Indeed, the sultan presented trays of baklava to the Janissaries every 15th of the month of Ramadan in a ceremonial procession called the Baklava Alayı.

Other claims about its origins include: that it is of Assyrian origin, dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was mentioned in a Mesopotamian cookbook on walnut dishes; that al-Baghdadi describes it in his 13th-century cookbook; that it was a popular Byzantine dessert. But Claudia Roden and Andrew Dalby find no evidence for it in Arab, Greek, or Byzantine sources before the Ottoman period.

One of the oldest known recipes for a sort of proto-baklava is found in a Chinese cookbook written in 1330 under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty under the name güllach (Buell, 1999). "Güllaç" is found in Turkish cuisine. Layers of phyllo dough are put one by one in warmed up milk with sugar. It is served with walnut and fresh pomegranate and generally eaten during Ramadan.

Local versions

In Turkey, Gaziantep is famous for its baklava and regarded there as its native city, though it only appears to have been introduced to Gaziantep from Damascus in 1871. In 2008, the Turkish patent office registered a geographical indication certificate for Antep Baklava.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, most Bosnians like their baklava rich in nuts and filling. This is a characteristic recipe. Bosnians eat Baklava only on special occasions, mostly eaten in the holy months of Ramadan (Ramazan in Bosnian) and Eid (Bajram in Bosnian).

In Iran, a unique, dryer version of baklava is cooked and presented in smaller diamond-shaped cuts flavored with rose water.

In Afghanistan, baklava is prepared into triangle-shaped pieces and is lightly covered in crushed pistachio nuts.

Etymology

The word baklava entered English from Turkish; it is sometimes connected with the Arabic word for "bean" (بقلة /baqlah/), but Wehr's dictionary lists them as unrelated; the Arabic name is doubtless a borrowing from Turkish. Buell (1999) argues that the word "baklava" may come from the Mongolian root baγla- 'to tie, wrap up, pile up' composed with the Turkic verbal ending -v; baγla- itself in Mongolian is a Turkic loanword. The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic variations.

Translation

The word "Baklava" occurs as such in the following languages: English, Alemannic, Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Croatian, Indonesian, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Simple English, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish.

Translation(s) in other languages: Arabic: بقلاوة, Azeri: Paxlava, Bengali: বাক্‌লাভা, Bulgarian: Баклава, Greek: Μπακλαβάς, Persian: باقلوا, Korean: 바크라와, Hebrew: בקלווה, Georgian: ფახლავა, Japanese: バクラヴァ, Polish: Bakława, Russian: Пахлава, Albanian: Bakllava, Serbian: Баклава, Ukrainian: Баклава, Chinese: 果仁蜜餅.