Maison Zineb
A portrait of Zineb Bouhired, baklava maker · second generation — Manchester.
Maison Zineb sits on the cliff edge of Constantine, in a stone house with a kitchen older than the building above it. Zineb's father, Sidi Ahmed, opened the bakery in 1968. He taught her that real baklava needs forty layers of phyllo and the patience of a slow Friday afternoon.
"My father used to say: forty layers, or don't bother. I still count them out loud."
A few quiet rules in the kitchen.
Layers are time made edible. A pastry rushed is a pastry forgotten — we let dough rest the way the old town teaches you to rest, without apology.
A recipe passed by hand.
Sidi Ahmed Bouhired learned phyllo from a Damascene baker who had fled the war and settled in Constantine in the 1950s. The technique has been passed from his hands to Zineb's, almost without words.
From the hand,
to the box.
Two bakers, one apprentice. Twelve trays a day at most — when the honey runs out, the day ends.
- 01
Phyllo stretched by hand on a marble table — never machine-rolled
- 02
Forty layers, brushed one by one with clarified butter
- 03
Pistachios crushed under a wooden mallet the morning of baking
- 04
Slow-baked until the layers separate like the pages of a book
- 05
Finished with warm mountain honey, never cold sugar syrup
Every ingredient has an address.
Aleppo pistachios from a trusted importer in Marseille, mountain honey from a single beekeeper in the Aurès, butter churned in Sétif.
What this house is known for.
RamadanPistachio Baklava, forty layers
par patisserie zineb
RamadanHave a question for Zineb?
Custom orders, gift notes, allergens, a wedding tray — write directly. Zineb answers herself.
Write to the kitchen