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Who doesn’t love ice cream? Ice cream has become one of the most popular desserts in the United States and the rest of the world. Worldwide, ice cream has become a multi-billion dollar industry that is getting bigger and bigger each year. While we’ve all experience ice cream from a small age, the history of this food item is actually quite interesting.
credit: Ted Drake
Shortly after human beings figured out how to grind grain to bake bread, someone invented pastry. What is pastry and how does it differ from other baked goods? It’s all in the dough.
Pastry is the name given to both the finished product, such as pies or turnovers, and the dough from which the dishes or made. The dough features some kind of fat combined with flour and water. Some pastries, like croissants, are all about the dough while for others the dough is just a frame for the filling. It all began in the Middle East more than a millennium ago.
Phyllo
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Although the Greeks gave this dough its name–phyllo means “leaf” in Greek–its origins can be traced back to the ancient Assyrians as early as the 8th Century BC. Made by stretching and rolling the dough until it’s paper thin, traditional recipes call for the dough to be rolled no more than 4/1000th of an inch thick. While some still make their phyllo by hand, it’s also available in the frozen section of most supermarkets.
Phyllo is the dough used for baklava, a pastry eaten throughout the Middle East. Baklava is made by sandwiching layers of the leaves with butter, nuts and spices. A sugar/honey syrup is poured over the warm pastry after it’s baked and allowed to soak into the layers.
Strudel
Strudel, Germany and Austria’s answer to baklava, is another pastry made up of many layers of very thin dough. Traditionalists specify that the dough be thin enough to read a newspaper through. These days most strudel recipes cheat and use frozen phyllo. But it’s still possible to find a recipe for traditional apple strudel.
Puff pastry
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Another flaky pastry, puff pastry is made by placing pats of chilled butter between layers of pastry dough, then rolling it out, folding it in thirds and letting it rest. This process is repeated six to eight times, produces a pastry comprising hundreds of layers of dough and butter. When baked, the moisture in the butter creates steam, causing the dough to puff and separate into layers. Puff pastry is used to make a variety of pastries, including croissants and pain au chocolat, the croissant’s chocolate filled cousin.
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It’s called a Danish, but this buttery pastry got its start in New York City reportedly through the efforts of L.C. Klitteng, who opened the Danish Culinary Studio there in the early 20th century. After Klitteng made Danish for the wedding of President Woodrow Wilson in 1915, the pastry spread across the country.
Like puff pastry and strudel dough, the pastry for the Danish is also rolled out, dotted with butter, then folded and rolled again and again. Danish pastries contain a variety of fillings from fruit, cheese and almond paste to nuts.
Pâte à choux
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A completely different method is used to make pâte à choux. The dough is created by combining flour with boiling water and butter, then beating eggs into the mixture. When baked, the dough puffs out but the center is slightly hollow, making an ideal receptacle for ice cream, custard or pastry cream. Culinary historians trace the pastry’s origins to 15th Century France. It was the creation of Panterelli, Catherine de Medici’s personal chef.
Cream puffs and eclairs are all made from pâte à choux. As is the traditional French wedding cake, the croquembouche, which is basically a pile of profiteroles (cream puffs) stacked into a cone and covered with caramel sauce.
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In France, beignets are made from pâte à choux, but somewhere along the line their descendants in New Orleans changed the recipe in favor of a dough that did not require time on the stove.
The donut is a direct descendant of the beignet.
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Tarts
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Tarts are characterized by a rich pastry with no top crust. Tarts are made using one of two doughs: Pâte brisée and pâte sucrée. The first is a buttery crust used for both sweet and savory tarts such as quiche, the second adds sugar to the mix. Tarts are typically backed in a shallow-sided pan with a removable bottom. A galette is a free form version made without a pan.
Tarte tatin is France’s answer to apple pie. An upside-down tart, it’s made by covering the bottom of a shallow baking dish with butter and sugar, then apples and topped with a crust of pâte brisée.
The tarte aux fraises is a classic French tart made with pâte sucrée. The crust is baked, filled with pasty cream and topped with fresh strawberries. Roll out the dough and cut it into shapes and you’ve got shortbread.
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Add nuts to pâte sucrée and you’ve got pâte sablée, a sweet crumbly crust that the Viennese use to make Linzertorte, a buttery, nutty crust filled with raspberry jam.
Pies
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Pies can have bottom crusts only, or top and bottom crusts. Pies came to us from the English, who have been making sweet and savory pies since the Middle Ages. A classic English–and American–pie crust uses lard or shortening for the fat in the dough as opposed to butter.
Apple pie may be considered an American classic, but America’s contribution to pie came with the fillings. Sweet potatoes, pumpkins and pecans are all new world ingredients.
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Another American classic is lemon meringue pie. A 19th Century invention, lemon meringue pie bears more than a passing resemblance to the Queen of Puddings, a classic British dessert. But some attribute the origins of the lemon curd filling to 18th Century Quakers in Philadelphia. Egg whites have been used as the main ingredient in desserts since Elizabethan times, but were perfected as meringue in the 17th Century. No one seems to know who put the two together, which is a shame since that anonymous pastry chef deserves a place in the culinary hall of fame.
(Photo: Sashertootie)
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As the days get longer and warmer, our thoughts turn to spring cleaning. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, but need a little guidance on how to proceed, the Web has a number of resources to help you.
But first, a little history.
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Filing taxes is a chore that few people look forward to doing. Not only can it take a lot of time, it’s easy to make mistakes while filing. Additionally, it’s extremely common to miss tax break opportunities if you are filing your taxes by yourself.
Luckily, there is an abundance of online tax software. The tax software can make the filing process faster and can help you eliminate any errors you might otherwise make. Also, you may be able to find tax breaks that you didn’t know existed.
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Almost everyone gets up in the morning and puts their clothes on. Don’t be one of those people. Now wait. No one is suggesting that you should go to work in your birthday suit. But you should stop just putting your clothes on and start really getting dressed. What you wear is an expression of who you are and how you’re feeling. Do your clothes really say that about you?
If you have any last minute concerns about cooking Thanksgiving dinner, here are some helpful tips:
Did you wait to long to thaw your turkey?
Don’t fret, you can speed thaw it in your kitchen sink. Place the turkey, still in the plastic wrapper, in your sink and fill with cold water.
Change the water every 30-45 minutes. It will take about 4 hours to thaw out a 10-12 pound turkey.
How do you know when turkey is done?
To know for sure when your Thanksgiving turkey is done, you must use a meat/poultry thermometer. Cook your turkey until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Check the temperature in the thickest part of the breasts, as well as under the wings.
Other Last Minute Thanksgiving Tips
If you forget to boil the potatoes, don’t worry about using instant mashed potatoes instead. If you use lots of butter when mixing them, no one will know the difference.
Set up a kids-only table, if you are having a lot of guests at your home for Thanksgiving dinner. It will make both the kids and the adults much more comfortable.
If you need a quick centerpiece, use a large clear glass bowl and fill it with colorful fruits, such as apples, oranges, plums and bananas. Not only will it be a colorful centerpiece, but your guests will heave something else to munch on after the meal.
Thanksgiving Resources:
Happy Thanksgiving!
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