The baker appeared as an apparition, ghostly and obscured by an impossibly thin flowing shroud that he held aloft. It was as though the air around him had taken translucent form, cloaking him in a barely-­there haze. Through it, his silhouette worked silently, stark against walls of grey marble and glass, gently manipulating the fog that cloaked him.

Until with a quick snap and flourish, the fog cleared and the sheet that had masked him fluttered gently to the table in a smooth, linen-­like expanse. The man nimbly wound it around a long wooden dowel, rolling and compressing almost too fast to track, before unfurling and hoisting it once more into the air, over and again.

Dozens of men cloistered on the third floor of İmam Çağdaş Kebap Ve Baklava participated in this flour-clouded choreography, producing thousands upon thousands of ethereal sheets of phyllo dough, the classic paper-thin pastry of Türkiye. I was in Gaziantep, a city of limitless kebabs and flatbreads tucked close to the country’s southern border with Syria.

And I was there for the baklava, which İmam Çağdaş Kebap Ve Baklava has produced in abundance for nearly 140 years. Hüseyin Akay is the fifth generation of his family to helm the sprawling restaurant, which started out serving nothing but beyran çorbası, the city’s classic soup for which there is one cardinal rule: It is consumed ONLY at breakfast.

I asked Akay if there were similar rules regarding the eating of baklava. He laughed at me. “If you are not sick, and if you do not have a problem about sugar, you eat it every time of day.” About this he was emphatic.

THE EVOLUTION

No one is quite certain where Turkish baklava was born, but most accept Gaziantep as its long-­reigning epicenter with a history dating back to at least the Ottoman Empire. Back then, it likely was known as gullaç, a layered bread composed of thin sheets of dough brushed with milk and butter, then sprinkled with chopped nuts before baking.

Over time, that dough became thinner and thinner, evolving into the phyllo we know today. Likewise, while affordable walnuts originally were the nut of choice, the region’s relative wealth—and abundant pistachio farming—meant that by the mid-19th century a gradual change occurred. Today, nearly all baklava produced in Gaziantep is made with pistachios.

And depending on who is doing the counting and how the math is managed, there are at least a couple dozen varieties of baklava produced, with more ambitious counters putting the number in the hundreds. Many of those varieties—most of them, in fact—resemble at least in part the baklava you probably already know.

That is, numerous crispy-flaky layers of phyllo browned and crackling, drenched in clarified butter and sugary syrup, all of it layered copiously with nuts. A delicious mess to eat, flakes and shards of phyllo shattering and cascading down your shirt, sticky fingers and all. The most famous is called, quite simply, Gaziantep baklava, often shortened to Antep baklava.

The many variations mostly manifest as differences in how they are assembled. It’s not uncommon for a baklava to be assembled from 40, 60 or even 80 or more sheets of phyllo. And how they are stacked and layered with the pistachios—some simple, many elaborate—and whether a cream filling is added, determines the style, texture and taste of the finished product.

Even how it is cut matters. In Gaziantep, people prefer havuc, or carrot slice baklava. Mind you, no carrots are harmed in the making of this incredibly sweet treat. Rather, it’s a reference to the pie slice-like way the round pan of baklava (which, by the way, is incredibly heavy thanks to all that clarified butter and syrup) is sliced just before going into the wood-fired oven.

THE PROCESS

At İmam Çağdaş Kebap Ve Baklava, this is an arduous affair. Some 70 men—most have been at it for decades, and it takes at least three to four years to learn to roll the dough properly—labor in shifts that span 20 hours a day to produce up to 3,000 kilograms of baklava, hand rolling each sheet of phyllo in rooms where the air is so heavy with flour they wear masks.

And to call the volume of syrup and butter used gratuitous doesn’t begin to capture it. Not to mention tons—that’s not hyperbolic, that’s a measurement—of vibrantly green pistachios, tasting earthy and creamy.

Once the phyllo is prepped, it is handed off to bakers who layer it with the nuts in cake pans several inches deep. The depth is less about the baklava itself and more about the sheer volume of melted clarified butter each layer is doused with, so much so the ingredients all but swim in it. And depending on the style of baklava, that phyllo isn’t just layered with nuts. It might be tucked or twisted or puffed, processes that create intricate, even woven, patterns in the finished dish.

Finally, each baklava is scored into individual portions in the pan using what can be an equally intricate pattern depending on the variety. They then are baked in wood-fired ovens at 300°C for 20 to 30 minutes.

Even the final step is... over the top. After baking, each pan is set on a gas burner topped with a round grate that spins. As the fresh-from-the-oven baklava rotates slowly over the flame—the upward heat helps loosen the pastry from the pan—multiple cups of sugary syrup are sloshed over, sizzling as the syrup melds with the phyllo, pistachios and butter.

The result is deliciously saturated with fat and sugar, all of it drenching crunchy nuts and flaky phyllo. But did I mention arduous? Few of us have the time, patience or skill to execute this dish at home, no matter how worthy the effort.

THE SOLUTION

As so often is the case, the solution was buried in the history of the dish. Baklava evolved into an industry that caters to the tedious task of rolling out phyllo, methodically layering and shaping it, and carefully baking and dousing it. Which explains why today, even in Türkiye, it mostly is a treat enjoyed from shops rather than prepared at home.

My search for a version that aligned with home cook sensibilities took me back in time, kind of. The biggest issue in bringing a baklava recipe back to the U.S. was the phyllo itself. Most of us don’t have Akay’s army of bakers rolling out fresh sheets of dough. And from many frustrating attempts at baklava (and Greek spanakopita), I knew that the sheets sold in our supermarket freezer cases are brittle, dry, and all around disappointing.

In a way, the answer was gullaç, that layered bread of nuts, milk and butter that spawned baklava. Turns out, it has a modern counterpart. It’s called fıstıkzade-­style baklava, and it puts the focus more on the pistachios, less on the phyllo. It starts with multiple layers of phyllo that are simply stacked in a baking pan with melted butter brushed between them.

During cooking, that thick, doughy bottom crisps deliciously, but not dryly, creating a rich crust, if you will. A crust substantive enough to support a weighty volume of coarsely ground pistachios that are spread over it. This is followed by a few spare sheets of phyllo layered with finely ground pistachios, creating multiple thin layers built from a little dough and a lot of pistachios. The result is dense with nuts, but does away with the flaky parts we associate with traditional baklava.

Or so I was promised. To find out, I headed to Özikizler, a baklava bakery wedged between a run of slaughterhouses on the outskirts of the city. Like most shops, they make numerous varieties of baklava, but they are one of the few that still prepare old-school fıstıkzade-­ style baklava.

Baker Musrur Bakar offered to show me how it was done, though he cautioned that this style of baklava has fallen out of style. “Antep people,” he said, using the abbreviated term for Gaziantep, “don’t like this variety anymore. They prefer the classic style.”

I have no doubt those folks know and love their baklava far better than I. But when I tasted Bakar’s fıstıkzade-­style baklava, I knew we had our winner. He assembled it as had been described to me—plus a few twists. First, as he assembled it, he used a second pan to compress the layers, nuts and all. Second, he baked it—per usual, in a wood-fired oven—but unlike other varieties, he covered it. Admittedly, he covered it with cardboard, which to me seemed like a fire hazard. But still... Finally, he finished it with the usual sugar syrup—and plenty of it—but his had been simmered with ample lemon zest.

The result was nothing shy of amazing. It was dense—that compression clearly mattered—with an almost blondie-­like texture. It wasn’t exactly cake-like, and yet it kind of was, with tons of meaty-crunchy-creamy pistachios. And without an onslaught of flaky phyllo to compete with, those nuts were able to truly shine as the star of the dish. The butter and syrup didn’t hurt, either, of course.

And the addition of lemon zest? Brilliant. It brightened and balanced all the richness of the pistachios and sweetness of the syrup without competing with the other ingredients. And with a dish with so few ingredients, that’s key.

Adapting this recipe for the American home cook nonetheless took some work. Even with fıstıkzade-­­style baklava, the phyllo dough we have available in the United States proved tricky to work with. The moisture content of freshly made phyllo is much higher, a difference that allows the dough to meld with the pistachios and not become brittle and dry during baking.

Covering during baking was critical—though we opted for a round of oven-friendly parchment instead of cardboard—for trapping moisture released by the nuts during baking. This also moderated browning. Spritzing the top with water just before baking also helped. And while clarified butter, which contains no water, is traditional, we got better results with conventional butter, which is up to 18 percent water. The extra moisture helped mitigate the dryness of our phyllo.

The result? A baklava that truly lets the pistachios shine while making the most of the grocery store phyllo most of us must work with. As tempting as it would be to try our hand at making fresh phyllo and transform ourselves into shrouded spirits for the sake of a great dessert.

J.M. Hirsch

J.M. Hirsch is a James Beard Award-winning food and travel writer and editorial director of Christopher Kimball's Milk Street. He is the former national food editor for The Associated Press and has written six books, including “Freezer Door Cocktails: 75 Cocktails That Are Ready When You Are.”