I decided I wanted spanakopita this week and in the absence of any frozen phyllo, I decided to just make it myself. My go-to cook book The Joy of Cooking refuses to give a recipe, telling you instead to go buy it frozen. This should have been a red flag.
The internet had a few recipe suggestions for this dough: water, oil, flour, salt, and a dash of vinegar, rolled thin. Simple, right? Well, here are the ten lessons I learned:
- Roll the dough thinner.
- Thinner.
- Thinner.
- Even thinner.
- Keep going.
- No, even thinner than that.
- Even thinner.
- The cornstarch and flour mixture is very important to keep the sheets from sticking together.
- In small amounts vinegar strengthens a dough, allowing it to retain shape or, in this case, hold together when stretched so thin.
- Homemade phyllo is finicky and tedious in ways that hurt my back and neck to repeatedly roll out the sheets, even to produce sheets as thick and clumsy as mine. But it is also delicious.
Noodlings 