Recipes    

Turkish cuisine provides healthy, hearty, delicious food for family and friends.
Find out more

Cookery Classes

I teach Turkish cooking classes in England,Turkey & USA, hope you can join us!,
Find Out More

Baklava Uncovered, Gulluoglu – Istanbul


This whole post deserves to be dedicated to our Baklava Masterclass with the baklava experts at Gulluoglu. We have been looking forward to our baklava class for months to reveal how the genuine article is made – and here it is!

Gulluoglu Baklava is a family owned store and they have been making “hand made” baklava for 6 generations – the daily production ranges from 2-5 tons, all hand made!
They use organic butter, pure cane sugar – no honey!-, and it is a result of their mastership for 150 years, very impressive.

Here is the baklava making master class 🙂


The dough is being pushed thru a special machine (similar for making pasta) to stretch. This is the only step that involves machinery.


Once the pastry is paper thin (2mm width), we start layering on a buttered tray.

The hand rolled pastry is so thin that you can see through my logo,

as well as the flags behind it!

Our baklava master layered 20 sheets of pastry ( and sprinkled melted butter on every 4 sheets) than generously spread finely crushed pistachios (or at some cases walnuts)on the 20th layer.

He cut the sheets first horizontally and poured melted butter over them – cutting helps the butter to penetrate every level. Then he cut vertically and splashed another dose of butter all around. The baklava is now ready to be baked in the oven at 165 C.

In the meantime, the syrup is prepared, consisting of pure cane sugar, lemon juice and water – no honey in it!

Once cooked, hot syrup is poured over the hot baklava, and then let it rested at the cool area.


And here is the real thing; wonderful, melt in the mouth delicious baklava. It is so light that you feel like eating the whole tray! I hope you get a chance to try the real baklava in Turkey:)

6 Responses to Baklava Uncovered, Gulluoglu – Istanbul

  1. Nancy in Austin TX August 4, 2011 at 10:42 am #

    Is this the baklava from the place below the Hamdi Restaurant? Looks delicious, yum!

  2. Nadine December 9, 2011 at 5:45 pm #

    beautiful!!

  3. istanbul Tours March 8, 2012 at 9:17 am #

    nice text & pictures.
    Thank you.

  4. William Sutanto November 10, 2017 at 4:52 am #

    Dear Ozlem Warren,

    I’m William from Indonesia.

    I’m really interested with the Turkish Baklava,can you inform me where I can have a cooking class to make Baklava and the variety in Istanbul.

    Many thanks.

    • Ozlem Warren November 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm #

      Hi William, thank you for reaching out – if you’re planning a trip to Istanbul, I suggest you get in touch with Gulluoglu, they offer demo classes in Karakoy. If in London, we can have a private baklava lesson, my best wishes, Ozlem

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. An Emotional, Poignant Moment at Dardanelles, Gallipoli ; Anzac Day | Ozlem's Turkish Table - April 25, 2014

    […] off we set towards Istanbul, looking forward to the buzz of the city and that baklava […]

Leave a Reply