Warqa pastry substitutes

The standard substitute in every Western pastilla recipe, and it works if you use enough of it and enough butter.

Best for

a full-size round pastilla or bstilla, briouat and rolled pastries, supermarket shopping

Phyllo is drier and more brittle than warqa, so it needs roughly twice as many layers and a brush of melted butter on every one. It bakes into large flaky shards rather than warqa's finer, more papery crackle, and it browns faster, so watch the top in the last ten minutes.

The thinnest of the pre-cooked wrappers, and the closest in fineness to warqa.

Best for

individual pastilla, briouat, where they fold without cracking, a fine, even crackle rather than big flakes

Being already cooked they stay flexible and never shatter while you work, which makes assembly far less stressful than phyllo. They crisp very finely. The drawback for a big pastilla is size, so you will need to overlap several per layer and butter the overlaps so they fuse.

Sturdier than lumpia and just as flexible, which makes them ideal for anything folded or rolled.

Best for

briouat and individual pastilla, fried rather than baked pastries, wet fillings that would soak through phyllo

They fry to a superb crisp shell and bake reasonably well. The texture is chewier and much less layered than warqa, so a pastilla made from them reads as one crisp casing rather than as many fine leaves. Buy the wheat kind from the freezer, not rice paper.

What Moroccan home cooks actually make when warqa is not available, and closer in principle than anything bought.

Best for

getting the layering right, when no shop nearby stocks pastry sheets, avoiding the cracking problem entirely

Make a thin flour-and-water batter with a beaten egg and a pinch of salt, and cook paper-thin rounds on one side only. Butter between the layers. The finished pastilla is softer and less crisp than the real thing, more like a layered pancake pie, but the structure and the way it holds a wet filling are right.

Makes a good pie, and it is not pastilla.

Best for

when crispness matters less than convenience, feeding people who like a rich pastry, a store-cupboard version

Puff rises into something thick, buttery and substantial, which is the opposite of pastilla's thin shattering shell, and it will not take the icing sugar and cinnamon finish gracefully. Blind bake the base or the wet filling will make it sodden. Use it knowing you are making a Moroccan-spiced pie.

The honest position: warqa really is finer than anything you can buy, and phyllo is still the right choice.

Best for

cooks who want the best realistic result, pastilla for guests, any recipe written for warqa

A phyllo pastilla is always slightly coarser and flakier than one made with warqa, and that is fine, because it is the swap most Moroccan cooks in the West make. What actually ruins a substitute pastilla is not the pastry but under-buttering the layers and using a filling that is too wet.