Athenian Pie

It was on Crete that I first saw filo pastry being made. With his face and body white under a dusting of flour, the town baker rolled the dough out with lightning skill until he had a vast sheet as thin as tissue paper. He then threw the whole sheet in the air, miraculously not tearing it, swiftly folded it up like a newspaper, cut it into oblong sheets and sold it to one of the customers queueing at his door. It is this delicate, brittle pastry which makes the large pies of Greece, which y