[Sca-cooks] Leaf pastry devloped into puff pastry

[Suey]

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.
Sue