Pastry Day: Some interesting facts! (2024)

FAQs

What are some interesting facts about pastries? ›

- Ancient Egyptians were the first ones to come up with the idea of pastries. Called baklava and filo, they were made out of grain meal with honey, fruits and spices. - Pastries were brought to Europe during the Muslim invasion of the 7th century and picked up the imagination of Europeans.

Pastry is the dough from which some baked products are made. Pastry dough is rolled out thinly and used as a base for baked products. It is made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and/or eggs. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches and pasties.

Pastry Dough (pâte brisée)

Pastry doughs are simple preparations for sweet and savory pies and tarts that usually contain flour, fats, and water, with some versions including sugar, eggs, cream cheese, or milk. They are minimally mixed to avoid gluten development in the flour, which would result in a tough crust.

Pies were actually termed 'pyes' in medieval England. It wasn't until the 1500s that someone had the novel idea of filling a pie with fruit rather than meat, and it is thought that the very first cherry pie was sampled by Queen Elizabeth I herself!

Pastry refers to a variety of doughs (often enriched with fat or eggs), as well as the sweet and savoury baked goods made from them. These goods are often called pastries as a synecdoche, and the dough may be accordingly called pastry dough for clarity.

The Ancient Egyptians created the first example of what we know as pies today. Later on, closer to the 5th Century BC, the Ancient Greeks were believed to invent pie pastry as it is mentioned in the plays of the writer Aristophanes and it was possible to work as a pastry chef in this era, a separate trade to a baker.

The first golden rule of making pastry; keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible.

The earliest known pastries were made by the ancient Egyptians. They baked cakes made from wheat and honey, often flavored with fruits and nuts. These cakes were baked on hot stones and were likely the first known example of baking.

Although pizza is made from dough and contains tomato sauce, cheese, and sometimes meat, it is not a pastry shell. Instead, it is a round dish with ingredients on top deliciously served at Pizza Bien. The word "pie" can refer to many dishes, such as pies, tarts, pies, and more.

Is a cupcake a pastry? ›

Muffin and Cupcake are both small in size, similar in shape – a feature that often makes people confuse these two types of pastries. However, it's easy to distinguish between the two if you observe: Muffin has simple decoration, Cupcake has a more sophisticated layer of cream on top.

A cookie is a small sweet, crispy or cake-like pastry most often made with flour, sugar, liquid and fat. They are characterized by: High sugar content. High fat content. Low moisture.

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

Bakers and pastry chefs often work long schedules with early mornings, late nights, and holidays. 9. They spend a lot of time preparing and combining ingredients, as well as monitoring baking processes; applying icings, other toppings and decorations; and storing, transporting and/or presenting/displaying their works.

There are five main types of pastry dough for creating pastries: flaky, shortcrust, puff, choux and filo. All of them are made primarily from flour, water and fat.

Originally, the French word pastisserie referred to anything, such as a meat pie, made in dough (paste, later pâte) and not typically a luxurious or sweet product. This meaning still persisted in the nineteenth century, though by then the term more often referred to the sweet and often ornate confections implied today.

The story goes that Lorrain was making a type of very buttery bread for his sick father, and the process of rolling the butter into the bread dough created a croissant-like finished product. The modern French puff pastry was then developed and improved by the chef M. Feuillet and Antonin Carême.