Phyllo Facts

Phyllo (from phyllon, the Greek word meaning “leaf”) is tissue-paper-thin sheets of pastry dough made from flour, water, and a tiny bit of oil. Sweet and savory fillings are encased in many buttered layers of phyllo, yielding incomparably light, crisp, and flaky pastries. The exact origins of phyllo, called yufka by the Turks, is still debated, but this versatile pastry has been popular in Greece and Turkey and throughout the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe for centuries. Hungarians learned to make strudel dough (very similar to phyllo dough) from the Turks in the 1500s.