Flour

Greek kitchens divide flour by job rather than by brand. Soft plain flour handles pie dough, biscuits, cakes and the batters that coat vegetables before frying, while strong bread flour with a higher protein content is kept for yeasted work, above all tsoureki, whose long, feathery strands depend on gluten built through an unusually long knead.

Village pie dough is the most characteristic use. Horiatiki pita, made where nobody is buying commercial phyllo, is a plain dough of flour, olive oil, water and a splash of vinegar or ouzo, rested and then rolled out thin with a long dowel into rough sheets. The acid relaxes the gluten and helps the dough stretch without springing back or tearing.

The common failure is adding flour to fix a wet mixture. Courgette fritters, tomato fritters and their relatives are meant to be barely held together, and every extra spoonful of flour trades a light, crisp fritter for a heavy, doughy one. The right move with a slack mixture is squeezing more water out of the vegetable rather than tipping more flour in.