The World of Pastries

Appears in

Published 1994

About

It was also baking day. He loved seeing his mother bent over the enormous kitchen table, elbow-deep in dough, moving to the measured rhythm of making bread.... Before, in times of plenty, she had put aside a bit of the dough, added milk, eggs, and cinnamon, and made buns that she stored in a tin—one for each child for each day of the week.

ISABEL ALLENDE, EVA LUNA, 1988

When you start to explore strudel, Danish and all of the other baked goods that are neither pie nor cake, you’re opening the door to the entire world of pastry. From simple yeast-raised kolachy—buns filled with fruit or cheese—to ethereally flaky puff pastry creations like mille-feuilles (Napoleons) and pithiviers; from Greek and Middle Eastern phyllo desserts (baklava, galaktaboureko) to Wienerbrod, the real Danish pastry made with a yeast dough folded with butter, pastry displays intricate and glorious variations from culture to culture.