Arabic & Levantine Pantry Guide
Filo Dough (Phyllo / Gollash): Paper-Thin Pastry Sheets for Baklava and Savoury Rolls
Filo dough (also spelled phyllo, and known in Egypt and the Levant as gollash or baklava pastry) consists of tissue-thin unleavened sheets made from flour, water and starch. Brushed layer by layer with melted ghee, it bakes into shattering-crisp baklava, cream-filled warbat and savoury cheese rolls.
Thinner Than Tissue Paper: How Filo Differs from Puff Pastry
The word 'filo' (or 'phyllo') comes from the Greek for 'leaf', describing dough stretched and dusted with starch until it is virtually translucent. Unlike Western puff pastry, where cold butter is folded repeatedly inside the dough, raw filo sheets contain almost no fat at all. Instead, their delicate, multi-layered crunch is created by brushing each sheet lightly with melted ghee (samna) or clarified butter as you assemble the dish.
Sweet and Savoury Classics: Baklava, Warbat, Rakakat and Gollash
Because filo dough has a clean, neutral flavour, it bridges the sweet pastry counter and the hot mezze table: for desserts, it is layered with pistachios or walnuts for baklava, folded into triangles around clotted cream for Levantine 'warbat bil-qishta' (shaabiyat), rolled into 'znoud el-sit', or toasted in shards for Egyptian Umm Ali. For savoury dishes, it is rolled into crisp cigar-shaped cheese rolls ('rakakat' stuffed with akkawi, halloumi or kashkaval and parsley) or layered with spiced minced beef in Egyptian 'gollash bil-lahma'.
Three Golden Rules for Working with Filo Without Tearing
Because filo sheets are paper-thin, exposure to air dries them out in minutes. Keep three simple habits in mind: first, thaw frozen filo overnight in the refrigerator inside its sealed wrapper so condensation never makes the sheets stick together. Second, prep your filling and melted ghee before opening the pack, and keep the stack of filo covered under a clean, barely damp kitchen towel as you peel off one sheet at a time. Third, brush with pure ghee or clarified butter rather than whole melted butter – the water in unclarified butter turns thin filo gummy instead of crisp.