Is baklava vegan? 3 store baklavas checked, and 4 vegan phyllo doughs

Usually not. None of the three store-bought baklavas we checked is vegan: two contain butter or ghee, and the third has honey in its syrup. The phyllo is the easy part. Four plain doughs from three makers are vegan by their ingredient lists or their maker’s own label.

The three trays don’t fail the same way, which is why checking for one ingredient at a time doesn’t work. Trader Joe’s Pistachio Baklava is soaked in simple syrup, with no honey on the list, and it is brushed with clarified butter and lists eggs. Kontos’ Classic Baklava has neither honey nor eggs, and butter in its small-amounts group. Athens Foods’ baklava has no butter at all and a kosher pareve mark on its product page; it also lists honey. Look only for honey and you’d buy the Trader Joe’s or the Kontos tray. Look only for dairy and you’d buy the Athens one.

Why isn’t baklava vegan?

Because of what goes between the sheets and over the top. Athens’ FAQ says phyllo sheets are always layered with oil or butter. All three trays above contain plant fats, and two of them also contain butter or ghee, both of which come from milk. The syrup is sugar in two trays and includes honey in one. This site counts honey as not vegan, and our piece on why some vegans eat honey anyway gives the other side its due.

Some trays contain egg as well. Trader Joe’s ingredient list names eggs after the wheat starch. Neither of the two phyllo ingredient lists below includes egg, and The Fillo Factory calls its two doughs vegan.

Two common shortcuts let the honey through. Athens’ page shows a kosher pareve mark, and OK Kosher, one certifier, defines pareve as made from ingredients that are neither meat nor dairy, with eggs and kosher fish among the pareve ones. Pareve says nothing about honey. The allergen line misses it too. Athens’ reads “CONTAINS: Wheat, Walnuts”, because the FDA’s nine major allergens include milk and eggs but not honey. The honey is in the ingredient list, in the less-than-2% group, between the cultured wheat flour and the cinnamon.

Seven baklavas and phyllo doughs, read from the makers’ pages

We read each product’s own page in October 2026: the maker’s for six, the retailer’s for Trader Joe’s own-label tray. Three are finished baklava and none is vegan. Four are plain phyllo, and all four are.

Product	What it is	Vegan?	Why
Trader Joe’s Pistachio Baklava	Frozen baklava, 16 oz	No	Ghee and eggs; no honey
Athens Foods Baklava	Frozen baklava, 10 pieces	No	Honey; no butter, pareve
Kontos Classic Baklava	Baklava, 11 oz tray	No	Butter, kosher dairy
Athens Phyllo Dough Sheets	Frozen phyllo, 9 x 14 in sheets	Yes, by its ingredient list	Canola oil, no animal ingredients
Kontos Fillo #7	Phyllo, 14 x 18 in sheets	Yes, by its ingredient list	Soybean oil, kosher pareve
The Fillo Factory Organic Fillo Dough	Phyllo, 13 x 18 in sheets	Yes, per the maker	“Certified USDA Organic and Vegan”
The Fillo Factory Fillo Dough #7	Phyllo, 14 x 18 in sheets	Yes, per the maker	Marked “Vegan/Kosher”

Trader Joe’s Pistachio Baklava

The honey-free one, and still not vegan. Trader Joe’s describes Turkish experts brushing the phyllo with clarified butter and soaking the finished pieces in simple syrup, and its ingredient list runs sugar, water, wheat flour, ghee, palm oil, pistachios, wheat starch, eggs and salt. The allergen line says milk, egg, wheat and pistachio. Trader Joe’s calls it a limited-time freezer item, and it listed $10.99 for 16 oz when we checked. Skip it.

Athens Foods Baklava

No butter, no milk, 0 mg of cholesterol, and a pareve mark. Every one of those is true, and the description on the same page says the walnuts are “infused with delicate honey-lemon syrup”. Honey sits in the ingredient list below high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup and palm oil, so there isn’t much of it, but it’s there. Not vegan by this site’s line on honey. If your own line on honey is different, this is the one tray of the three without dairy or egg.

Kontos Classic Baklava

Kontos makes its own fillo for this tray, and the fillo is made with soybean oil. The butter comes later: the pastry is “buttered, baked and finished with a sweet, aromatic syrup”, and butter heads the list of ingredients at 2% or less. The allergen line lists milk, and the kosher certificate is dairy, so either tells you before the ingredient list does. Not vegan.

Athens Phyllo Dough Sheets

Enriched wheat flour, water, corn starch, dextrose, salt, canola oil and preservatives, and an allergen line that says wheat and nothing else. Athens doesn’t call it vegan anywhere on the page, but nothing on the list comes from an animal. Each 8 oz roll holds about 18 sheets, and it is sold frozen. Athens says to thaw it in the fridge overnight and then bring it to room temperature for about 2 hours, or leave the sealed roll on the counter for at least 3 hours, so it is not an impulse dessert.

Kontos Fillo #7

A similar short list with soybean oil in place of canola and no dextrose: enriched wheat flour, water, corn starch, soybean oil, salt and two preservatives. It is kosher pareve, and wheat is the only allergen listed. Kontos calls its #7 thicker yet flexible, best for large individual entrees or desserts. Avoid it if you avoid soy.

The Fillo Factory Organic Fillo Dough

The only organic dough here, and its maker calls it vegan: “Certified USDA Organic and Vegan”. The catch is that the product page shows no ingredient list, so you are taking the maker’s word for it until you have the box in your hand.

The Fillo Factory Fillo Dough #7

The Fillo Factory says this sheet “is often used for desserts like baklava”, and marks it Vegan/Kosher. The page asks you to buy at least 3 rolls, which is a lot of phyllo for one tray. Like the organic one, it shows no ingredient list online.

What to buy instead

We found no vegan baklava from a US maker. The ready-made vegan baklava we read about is from Karaköy Güllüoğlu in Istanbul: its pistachio version lists wheat flour, olive oil, beet sugar, wheat starch, pistachios, water, almond milk and salt (our translation), with no butter and no milk, and the page showed it out of stock.

So a vegan tray starts with one of the four phyllo doughs above. Athens’ FAQ gives the traditional way to layer the sheets as brushing each one with melted butter or olive oil, and suggests cooking spray as the easy way. If you want butter’s flavor without the milk, our guide to vegan butter for baking compares the sticks. The syrup needs no honey either: Trader Joe’s soaks its tray in simple syrup, and the honey in Athens’ tray sits in the less-than-2% group of its ingredient list.

How to check a box yourself

Read the ingredient list, all of it, including the small-amounts group at the end, because that is where Athens keeps its honey and Kontos its butter. A US label has to name milk and egg, either in the ingredient list or in a Contains line; honey isn’t one of the nine major allergens, so no Contains line will flag it. A kosher dairy mark is a strong warning to confirm on the list, and a pareve mark rules out meat and dairy but not eggs or fish, and says nothing about honey.

For plain phyllo, the line worth reading is the fat: canola or soybean oil on the two boxes here that publish an ingredient list, and the maker’s own vegan wording on The Fillo Factory’s two. If the honey question is the one left over, our list of bee-free syrups has eight to pour in its place.