Plunderteig

Appears in
Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafes of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague

By Rick Rodgers

Published 2002

  • About

Even though it is a Viennese invention, this dough is known in America as Danish pastry. (In Paris, however, it is called pate viennoise, and pastries made from it are referred to as Viennoiserie.) It combines characteristics of puff pastry and sweet yeast dough to make a very flaky baked product. Literally translated, Plunderteig would mean “stacked lumber dough.” Doughs created from the artful layering of butter and dough are called laminated doughs, as in laminated wood, so from laminated to lumber isn’t really a far stretch. There is also a German phrase, der ganze Plunder, or “the whole bag of tricks,” and Plunderteig certainly calls for the baker’s whole bag of tricks to make it well. It is the basis for Viennese Kipferln (crescent rolls, otherwise known as croissants, another Austrian invention that has been unjustly appropriated by another country) and other breakfast pastries.