01.01.2007 vonFranz

Rezept in Deutsch

A bright idea: wonderful, crispy herb bars. I found them at Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook and couldn’t resist trying the recipe right away …

Herb bars

Category: pastry, snack
serves: 1 recipe
Recipe source: inspired by “Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook”

Ingredients:
Phyllo dough, deep freezed, very thin
butter
white wine

salt
herbs, spice

Preparation:
Mix liquid butter and white wine at a ratio of 1:1. Cut the dough sheets in squares of approx. 23 cm by 17 cm. Put some of the butter-and-wine-mixture on one half of the sheet. Place small leaves of herbs at the edge of the sheet and salt the coated side. Put the dry half of the dough sheet on the coated half and press both together. Coat one third of the sheet again with the butter mixture and fold it. Now again coat the half of the sheet with the mixture and fold for the last time. Press the sheet layers together and coat the herbal outside of the bar with butter.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C with circulating air and bake the bars for approx. 3 to 4 min. on each side. Start with the butter-coated, herb side facing down. When the bars turn golden, remove them from the oven and carefully wipe remaining oil with a kitchen paper from the bar’s surface.

If you want the bars to be extremly thin, cut the sheets only half as wide as specified above and omit the first folding step.

You can also make fine bars with rice paper from an Asia food store. But you have to serve this variant immediately after baking because the rice sheets become very hard after a few minutes. Bars made with Philo dough can be baked hours before serving – they will remain tender and crispy.


It was not easy to find the right sheets of Phyllo-dough. It has to be very thin, nearly transparent. A deep-frozen dough worked at long last.

You can put fresh herbal leaves in the bars but it can also be dried herbs, spices, some grated cheese, or even grated salami provided it is hard enough for grating. Or perhaps some pieces of tuna, of course properly squeezed? There are no limits for your ideas.

This is how to fold the bars. If you want ultra-thin bars omit the first step shown on the left.

It is very important to coat the herb side thinly with butter. The bars will then be more transparent after baking.
Instead of the butter/wine mixture you can also use liquid butter. The bars will then be richer, with the butter providind an exquisite, nut-like flavour.

This is how you make the rice bars: the sheet is softened with some water and then treated on a wet towel as shown above.

Just for nibbling alone or as a garnish, for example with a soup, the herb bars are a real treat.

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