[Sca-cooks] Leaf pastry devloped into puff pastry

[Antonia Calvo]

Suey wrote:

> Terry Decker wrote under the subject Re: The croissant, the chicken or 
> the egg?
>
>>    There are references to "puff pastry" in the Middle Ages, but 
>> there is no way to tell if this is the puff pastry we now use.  Karen 
>> Hess states that the earliest recipe she can find that resembles 
>> modern puff pastry is in Thomas Dawson's, The Good Housewife's 
>> Jewell, the edition of 1586 (which may be a typo for 1596, I haven't 
>> checked on the various editions).  Presumably, there are a number of 
>> recipes for puff pastry collected in a book by Rontzier (1598) 
>> including a "Spanish" type of puff pastry (information unverified).  
>> Also unverified, is the information that P.V. Aenglen gives a recipe 
>> for puff pastry in "The French Baker" (1665).  And, IIRC, we had a 
>> discussion several years ago about a puff pastry recipe in La Varenne.
>>
>>
>>
>>   
>
> As per Carroll-Mann._Guisados 2-art_. Jun 6, 01:ftn 112 the Spanish 
> "hojaldre" was leaf pastry in Nola's time but developed into puff 
> pastry. Fifteenth century ensaimadas, bunuelos and the "gazelle 
> horns," buns made in the shape or "half moons" by the 13th Century in 
> Andalusia and the forerunners of the croissant, were made with leaf 
> pastry until the development of puff pastry. I have no medieval 
> references to puff pastry in medieval Spain.



I mest have another look at al-Andalus-- I think there's a bread recipe 
in there that's meant to be "leafy", but I've never tried making it.

-- 
Antonia di Benedetto Calvo

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Habeo metrum - musicamque,
hominem meam. Expectat alium quid?
-Georgeus Gershwinus
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