Every Christmas, Linda Motz looked forward to her family’s annual dessert platter. Her husband’s large Greek family and their friends always gifted trays of treats for the holidays, through which Motz discovered her favorite pastry: baklava (bakla’va). At the time she didn’t know how much baklava would affect her life’s trajectory.

As the years went on, the dessert trays lessened, and Motz thought to herself, I can make this. She spent countless hours throughout the 1990s trying to perfect a baklava recipe in her Grand Junction kitchen. Her children would enjoy batch after batch, eventually her friends too, but then it grew into something so much more. Slowly, friends of friends and even businesses wanted to get their hands on Motz’s tasty creation.

“With my baklava, people need to just put it in their mouth and try it. Once they try it, they almost always buy it,” Motz says, mentioning she’s always been a cook by nature. “What I hear most often is ‘it’s the best baklava I’ve ever had!’”

Crafting baklava is no easy feat. The layers of ooey goodness that compose the rich pastry require patience and experience, according to Motz, who has been providing Grand Junction with this treat for almost a decade. She opened her business, Baklava by Linda, in 2012 after her friends and family convinced her to finally let others experience its deliciousness. What started out as word of mouth has grown Baklava by Linda from a passion project to almost a full-time job for Motz.

As a retired high school family and consumer science teacher and fourth generation Grand Junction native, Motz combines her passion for community with her knowledge of food sciences into making and selling baklava. Her husband’s Greek lineage led her to baklava, and now that she’s put her own spin on it, she’s beyond excited to serve the treat to enhance festivities this season in Grand Junction and beyond.

Baklava originates from Greek and Middle Eastern cuisine, but some may argue it extends to Central Asia as well. The pastry is made of layers of phyllo, a very thin unleavened dough, nuts and is held together with honey or syrup. That’s the traditional core; Motz’s homemade recipe is unique in that she’s adapted ingredients to her liking over years of trial and error.

Until 2019, Motz was using her home kitchen to create batches of baklava. She was protected under the Colorado Cottage Food Act, which she helped promote in the local government to allow herself and Colorado farmers to produce and sell homemade goods. Motz has since moved to a commercial kitchen in Grand Junction — illustrating her devotion to expand Baklava by Linda. She’s a one-woman team, but she believes in hard work to produce quality baklava for her community.

“I love the look on people’s faces when they taste it,” she beams, adding how she loves when people share baklava in a communal setting.

While the holiday season is her busiest time, Motz makes baklava year-round. Last fall she created a pumpkin spice flavored baklava and is working on winter-specific flavors for this upcoming holiday season.

Corporate offices, family festivities and gift givers will all love indulging in a tray of Baklava by Linda. Spoke+Blossom can attest to this — our team gobbled down the pastry in record time.

Find Linda Motz at Mesa County craft fairs and markets or online at baklavabylinda.com.

Originally published in the Winter 2020-21 issue of Spoke+Blossom.

Baklava By Linda: Celebrate The Holidays With This Delectable Homemade Pastry