Jim and Helen Vlachos use Jim's grandmother's recipe to make their baklava.
(Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)
It's a typical weekday night for Jim and Helen Vlachos, who are making baklava from an old Greek recipe. The co-owners of Peasant Bakers use a formula from 91-year-old Eva "Yiayia" Geracoulis, Jim's grandmother.
The Vlachoses bake Geracoulis's baklava with walnuts, along with four other kinds, all sold as Real Baklava. The confection is traditional in Turkey, Greece, and many Middle Eastern countries. Recipes vary, but the basic method begins with many layers of very thin phyllo dough, which is buttered, scattered with nuts, scored to form diamond shapes, and baked until golden. After the tray of flaky pastry is removed from the oven, a sweet syrup is poured over the top.
The back story to Real Baklava began 30 years ago in Geracoulis's kitchen. Her son-in-law, James Vlachos, Jim's father, was visiting one afternoon. As Geracoulis tells the story, "James was sitting in the kitchen one day while I was making baklava. And he was just watching what I was doing and not saying anything. Then he went to the Greek food store that night and bought the phyllo and the walnuts and the butter and just started making baklava of his own."
Vlachos began baking pans of baklava for the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, as his late father-in-law, George, once did. The monastery's monks featured the baklava at feasts.
The best investment Vlachos made with his hobby was to teach his 12-year-old son Jim to make the confection. The boy found his passion.
"When I was in high school," says Jim, now 39, "my Dad drove a bread delivery route and he had restaurants and markets on his route. So I would sometimes sell my baklava to stores and restaurants along his route for pocket money. And in college I made money to buy books the same way."
The company he formed three years ago with his wife expands on Geracoulis's original recipe. Real Baklava comes with almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, and pecans, in addition to the traditional walnuts. The couple bakes at Nuestra Culinary Ventures in Jamaica Plain.
Jim wakes up at 5 a.m. and makes home deliveries to customers before going to work at Boston University, where he's part of the IT department. Helen works part-time as a research librarian at a Boston law firm. She gets to the kitchen around 4 p.m.; the two spend about 20 hours a week there. Helen goes home to Canton to make dinner for their two teenage sons. At night, Jim sometimes stays at Nuestra until 11 p.m. filling orders.
It turns out that one of Geracoulis's secrets is an unusual syrup made with cloves, honey, cinnamon, and orange rind. If you're wondering how her baklava is made, well that's a secret no one will divulge.
Real Baklava is available at Harry O's Pizza, 1405 Washington St., South End, 617-247-1450; Center Pizza and Restaurant, 607 Washington St., Canton, 866-746-0073 or go to realbaklava.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
