A pastry made with puff dough can have as many as 500 to 700 layers — no wonder nothing else can compare. Here’s a deep dive into the wondrous world of puff pastry — making it from scratch, and putting it to use in all sorts of ways.

Sure both are many layered (unlike the traditional pâté brisée that we use in so many of our recipes), but puff pastry and phyllo are not interchangeable. If you compared the two, phyllo would look like a sheaf of tissue paper while puff pastry would seem much thicker, more like regular pastry dough.

Puff or flaky pastries, used in meat pies, have double that quantity of fat – and it’s not usually heart-friendly fat. Filo pastry has a huge health advantage because there is no fat in the mix. The end product still presses all the pie buttons while being much better for our health and waistlines.

What is filo pastry typically made of? Filo pastry is made from an unleavened dough (meaning there’s no rising agent) of vegetable oil, a dash of salt and warm water added to plain flour that’s then kneaded and stretched by hand until it’s thin enough to see through.

Choose the right pastry… About a third of puff and shortcrust pastry is fat, and if it’s made with butter or palm oil, it contains more saturated fat than if it’s made with unsaturated fats such as sunflower spread. These are our most commonly used pastries, but it’s worth trying to keep them for a treat.

Filo is a much drier dough that’s stretched into paper-thin sheets, and it’s layered with melted butter or oil much in the same way you layer sauce and noodles to make lasagna. Fewer layers plus distinct sheets of a dry dough equals less overall rise and a pastry that’s more crunchy than puffy. Also read: We Bow to the Master: Pâte à Choux

Known as pâte feuilletée in French, puff pastry is made by rolling out pastry, placing a square of butter inside it, folding the dough and then rolling it out and folding again, repeating these steps to create contrasting layers (and layers) of butter and dough.

Phyllo is found in the freezer section in flat squares or rolls, although you may be able to find fresh phyllo in Greek markets. Defrost in the refrigerator and not on the counter since it can get gummy. Because phyllo dough doesn’t have much fat, the sheets are usually brushed with melted butter or oil and then layered together.

Some common Greek recipes using filo include: Filo is also very similar to other thin pastries used in North African cooking and for apple strudel, so can be used for both strudels and dishes like pastilla (North African meat pie).