[Sca-cooks] Period Baklava

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 4, 2007, at 10:10 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Yes, that is why I refer to that Florilegium file as "Period *baklava-
> like* layered pastries". Hmmm. Okay, what is the difference between
> "phyllo" and "puff pastry"? I thought they were basically the same,
> multiple, thin layers of pastry. And both post-1600.

Puff pastry has antecedents that may come from before 1600 CE. While  
phyllo also has period antecedents, phyllo qua phyllo is pretty much  
an industrial product, which probably makes it, in its current,  
recognizable form, somewhat newer than puff pastry. Which, while  
often factory-made, can still be made in a home kitchen without  
changing the basic method.

The difference is in the manufacture and assembly of the layers. Puff  
pastry is laminated with butter, folded, rolled, folded and rolled  
again, repeatedly until it's a fairly thin sheet composed of  
thousands of alternating layers of flour-and-water-dough, and butter.  
Think of Damascus steel done in dough and butter. When you bake it,  
the water in the pastry turns to steam, causing the pastry to inflate  
and become rigid as it bakes. Phyllo is cooked in individual layers  
without the butter, and only attains the multiple layers (usually  
painted with melted butter or oil) when you stack them in as many  
layers as you want. Then it's generally filled and/or formed, and  
baked again until crisp. It puffs slightly, but nowhere near as  
dramatically as properly made puff paste, which, under the right  
circumstances, can grow in thickness/height by a factor of 8-12 or more.

Adamantius





"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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