[Sca-cooks] Corn Flakes (Was: Period Baklava)

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> I recall reading a pretty detailed description someplace; I thought  
> it was in Harold McGee's On Food And Cooking, but I now can't find  
> the passage. I'll look for it again; there's a limited number of  
> places it would be if it's anywhere.

Again, all the descriptions I'm finding suggest that phyllo pastry is 
made from dough that is stretched. Also, I find that most sources 
suggest that machinery for commercially making phyllo dough was invented 
around 1970.

Well, here's the description of phyllo (which is, by the way, 
differentiated from puff pastry) in the _Encyclopedia of Food and 
Culture_:
"In Central Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, strudel and 
phyllo pastries are made from a dough of flour, a little butter or oil, 
and water, which is worked to form an elastic mass that is stretched 
into a paper-thin sheet. When the pastry is ready for use in baking, the 
surface is brushed with melted butter. Strudel pastry is rolled around 
fillings such as apples or poppy seeds, while phyllo is often cut into 
sheets and stacked in layers with nuts to make sweet dishes, or with 
spinach and cheese for savory ones."

The Encyclopedia Britannica, on baklava:

" rich Turkish, Greek, and Middle Eastern pastry of phyllo (filo) dough 
and nuts. Phyllo is a simple flour-and-water dough that is stretched to 
paper thinness and cut into sheets, a process so exacting that it is 
frequently left to commercial manufacturers. For baklava, 30 or 40 
sheets of phyllo, each brushed liberally with melted butter, are layered 
in a baking pan with finely chopped walnuts, pistachios, or almonds. 
After the pastry is baked it is drenched with a syrup of honey and lemon 
juice. Cinnamon, ground cloves, cardamom, or rosewater may flavour 
either the filling or the syrup."


-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"I thought you might need rescuing . . . We have a bunch of professors 
wandering around who need students." -- Dan Guernsey