I will be honest I have not done this dough since I took cooking classes. Why? Making this dough is not hard but it is a bit time-consuming and who has time to spare these days? Secondly, it’s pretty hard on the wrists and mine are in bad shape so I try to avoid it. Lastly, making phyllo involve using a lot of cornstarch and I personally hate the feeling of it on my hands.
Since I had a specific recipe in mind that used this dough I opted to redo it instead of buying frozen one from the store. I did not do a compare but I would assume its safe to say, homemade is better but the effort vs reward is probably not a good investment of time, at least for me 😉
Out of everything one can do homemade, this is probably the one I would skip doing and buy at the store.
Enough bitching from me, let’s get rolling
You need
- 250g all-purpose flour
- 1tsp salt
- 1tsp baking powder
- 3tsp olive oil
- 2tsp vinegar
- 96g warm water (~100F)
- cornstarch
Instructions
- In a stand mixer bowl put the flour, vinegar, salt, baking powder, olive oil and about half the water. Using the dough hook mix on low for about a minute then add the remaining water. You can increase speed a little and kneed for 2 minutes. You will have a nice non-sticky ball.
- Wrap the ball in plastic film and let it rest on your countertop for 90 minutes or so
- Now before you continue, weigh your dough. We will divide this into 20 pieces so we want equal pieces.
- My ball weighted 387g so I made small balls that weighed 26-27g. I made 14 balls ( I did have some leftover but my wrists were killing me so I discarded the remaining) and covered them with a clean dishcloth.
- For the next step, you press multiple doughs together. At first, maybe do 3 at a time until you are comfortable to do more at once.
- Dust your work surface with cornstarch and using a rolling pin flatten the dough into a 6″ circle. Dust the dough with cornstarch again and repeat with another ball. When you are done with the second dough, place it on top of the first one and cover it with cornstarch. Repeat with another one, I do 5-6 at a time but if it’s too hard for you simply do less at a time.
- With the flattened dough, using the rolling pin keep flattening the doughs. Check that the dough doesn’t stick together, if it is sticky dust some more cornstarch. Keep rolling the dough until you reach paper-thin thickness, the dough should be stretched about 12″
- Pile on parchment paper, repeat for another stack of dough. When you are done, put another parchment paper on top and roll it. Wrap in plastic film and put in the refrigerator. Use within a week.
