GUIDE · GREEK FOOD
What Baklava Is Made Of, and How It Is Made Fresh Every Morning
Four ingredients, a stack of paper-thin layers, and one step at the end that decides whether it shatters or sags. Despina has been building these trays since the eighties.
What is baklava made of? Layered sheets of paper-thin phyllo, chopped nuts and melted butter, baked and then soaked in a honey or sugar syrup. That is the whole of it. What changes from tray to tray is the nut, the spice and the syrup, and Despina builds ours every morning at our counter in Reading Terminal Market.
That is where most articles stop. The useful version is what those four things do to each other, which is what you taste and what we watch at seven in the morning.
The four things in every tray
Phyllo, nuts, butter and syrup. Everything else is a variation on those four. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes baklava as a rich pastry of phyllo dough and nuts, Turkish, Greek and Middle Eastern in the same breath, and one of the most common sweets served for special occasions in Turkey, Greece and some Balkan countries.
Phyllo is the part people ask about. It is a plain flour and water dough, stretched until it is thin enough to read through, then cut into sheets. Britannica calls that stretching “a process so exacting that it is frequently left to commercial manufacturers”, which is a more useful sentence than it looks. Buying sheet phyllo is ordinary practice, including in kitchens that make everything else by hand. We use sheet phyllo. We do not stretch our own, and we are not going to imply that we do.
What is handmade at our counter is the tray. The layering, the butter between the sheets, the nuts, the baking and the syrup at the end are all done here in the morning, by hand, by one person. That is a smaller claim than “homemade”, and a more specific one.
The nuts are chopped fine so they sit as an even seam rather than in lumps, and Britannica lists walnuts, pistachios or almonds without splitting them by country. The butter does the structural work, holding the layers apart so they bake into something that shatters rather than fusing into a slab. Britannica puts a general tray at “30 or 40 sheets of phyllo”, layered around the chopped nuts, baked, then drenched in a syrup of honey and lemon juice, with cinnamon, ground cloves, cardamom or rosewater sometimes flavoring the filling or the syrup.
What makes Greek baklava different
Less than most people expect, and the honest answer is that baklava is shared rather than owned. Britannica describes it as Turkish, Greek and Middle Eastern in one line and lists the three nuts without assigning any of them to a country. It is a pastry with regional habits, not a contested invention, and we are not going to settle that argument from behind a counter in Philadelphia.
Habits do cluster, though. Greek kitchens usually reach for walnuts, usually sweeten with honey rather than a plain sugar syrup, often add cinnamon and sometimes a little clove, and usually cut the tray into diamonds rather than squares. Every one of those is a tendency and not a rule, and you will find Greek families who do all four differently.
The differences you notice while eating a piece are not national ones anyway. They are how thin the layers are, how evenly the butter went on, and how the syrup was handled at the end, and those come down to whoever built the tray. If you want the other half of that, the family behind the counter is where ours starts.
How a tray is actually built
By hand, in the morning, before the market fills up. The pan is buttered first. Then the sheets go down a few at a time with butter brushed between them, the nut layer goes in, and more sheets go on top, buttered the same way. It is repetitive work that does not go faster if you hurry it: the sheets tear, and a torn sheet shows up later as a soft patch.
Then comes the step that surprises people. The whole tray is cut into pieces before it goes near the heat, because baked phyllo cannot be cut cleanly: the top layers shatter under the knife, the nut seam drags, and what should be neat pieces comes out as a pan of rubble. Cutting first also gives the syrup somewhere to go afterwards, down through the cuts instead of sitting on the surface.
All of this happens while the spits are getting going and the first coffee crowd is moving through the aisles. If you have never seen it, what the market looks like in the morning is its own subject.
We will not publish the method past that outline, and not for the sake of mystery. It is Despina’s, and the parts that make it hers are hers to keep. What we will say plainly is that nothing here is bought in finished. What sits in the case in the afternoon was layered, baked and syruped that morning, a few feet away.
Why the syrup step decides the texture
Because it is the only step that can undo all the others. The syrup is the one moment when liquid meets baked pastry, and how that meeting goes decides whether the piece cracks when you bite it or sits heavy and wet on the plate.
The principle is that the two are not the same warmth when they meet. That gap is what lets the syrup travel down through the cuts and into the layers instead of pooling where it lands. When it goes wrong it goes wrong obviously: syrup gathers at the bottom, the base turns to paste, and the top stays dry and papery.
We watch it rather than time it. The surface goes from wet to matte as the pastry takes what it is going to take, and the tray tells you when it has finished drinking. Then it is left alone to settle. It is also why a piece cut this morning and one that has spent an afternoon in a warm room are not quite the same object.
How to store baklava, and should it go in the fridge
Room temperature, covered but not sealed airtight, and out of the refrigerator if you can help it. That is what we do with a tray and what we tell people carrying a box out of the market.
Is baklava supposed to be refrigerated? Not by choice. A refrigerator is a cold, damp box, and phyllo is a stack of dry layers held apart by butter. Cold damp air is precisely what closes those layers up: the butter firms, the pastry loses its snap, and the syrup goes dull and thick instead of bright. Letting a chilled piece come back to room temperature brings some of it back, but not all.
Covered but not sealed is the half people get wrong. A sealed container traps the moisture the syrup gives off and hands it straight back to the pastry. A box with the lid resting on rather than clamped down, a tin, or a plate with a loose piece of foil over it all do the job. A zip bag with the air pressed out does not. Keep the pieces flat on one layer rather than stacked, because the weight presses the layers closed from above.
Dry air and a steady room is the whole of keeping it crisp: away from the stove, out of direct sun, and not on top of the refrigerator where the warm exhaust sits.
The trip home matters more than people expect. A box carried around a warm market all afternoon, or left in a car in the sun, has had its texture worked on before it reaches your kitchen. If that is the plan, taking a box home covers pickup and delivery.
How long does a tray keep? We are not going to hand you a number: it depends on your kitchen and the weather, and a figure invented for an article would be worse than none. Use your judgment.
What baklava is called in English
Baklava. There is no separate English word for it, and that is the actual answer to the question. English borrowed the word whole from Turkish. Merriam-Webster records its first known use in English in 1902 and defines it as “a dessert made of thin pastry, nuts, and honey”. Plenty of Greek desserts have names that never traveled into English, so it is worth noticing that this one did. You will see it written baclava or baklawa depending on who printed the menu, and phyllo written filo. Same pastry in every case.
Where to eat a piece made this morning
At our counter, inside Reading Terminal Market, any day of the week. Baklava is $4.25, and the Baklava Cheesecake is our house twist on it, both on the autumn 2026 menu. Despina bakes the baklava from scratch every morning, and the cheesecake is the one liberty we take with it.
The same morning window produces her spinach pies: Mama’s Spanakopita is $6.50, handmade the same way and on the same bench, and there is a platter version too. If you came for the other half of the counter instead, two cones turn on the spits and the difference between a gyro and souvlaki is the fastest way to decide.
We are open 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, every day, and the current list is on our menu. If the building is new to you, finding us inside the market will get you to the right aisle, and the rest of our guides cover the market more broadly.
Come and see a tray before it goes
The case is at the front of the counter, and the trays in it were built that morning. If you get here early enough you will see them whole. Despina has made them the same way since the eighties, and the family has run this counter since 1984. Our address and a map are on the contact page. Find us at the spit, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, every day.
Athens Voulgaridis
Athens is the second-generation owner of Olympia Gyro at Reading Terminal Market. The Voulgaridis family has run the counter since 1984.