Pastries

[coalescent]

Following on from the great Eastercon sandwich debate I can bring you the great CAPTION pastry debate. I tried to bring it to you yesterday, via the magic of text-to-lj, but it seems the question was lost in the ether. What I wanted to ask was this:

Is a croissant a type of pastry? If not, (a) what is it and (b) what is a pastry?

At the con, Tom thoughtfully provided a taxonomy of baked products to clarify his position. If anyone wishes to offer a competing taxonomy, now would be the time.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

A croissant is viennoiserie.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Actually it gets more complicated than that, on thinking about it, as it depends on where the croissant recipe is from. Parisian (and by default, most of France) croissants are made with butter, and so descend from the Austrian mode, and hence are viennoiserie. However, in areas around Marseille they are made with lard, and so tend to pastry...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

So pastry/viennoiserie is a lard/butter distinction? I never knew that.

[(Anonymous)]

YOU SIR ARE A GENIUS.

Niall, Andrew: CHOKE ON IT!

-- Tom

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

There'll be no living with him after this.

[fba.livejournal.com]

Looking at recipes for 'danish' pastries and croissants the dough mixture is pretty much the same. The main difference seems to be all the butter that gets rolled between the layers of a croissant.

That said - the dough has yeast in which IMO puts it more into the bread camp.......

nalsa, tinimaus or white_hart would probably be more qualified to comment though.....

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

That said - the dough has yeast in which IMO puts it more into the bread camp

This is certainly one school of thought. Another school of thought suggests that in preparation a croissant is more pastry than bread.

[tinimaus.livejournal.com]

Not sure about that...
But: I always thought that really good, original croissants were just flaky pastry, no yeast there.

[ex-susumu64.livejournal.com]

Can't we just term it 'food' and be done with it?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

That's just crazy talk! :)

I mean, what if someone offers you a pastry sometime? Wouldn't you want to know whether croissants were included as a possible option?

[ex-susumu64.livejournal.com]

Not if they had pastries with, y'know, jam or fruit in.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'll take an almond croissant over a jam danish any day of the week...

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, yeah. I agree.

coalescent, I'll take that jam danish off your hands.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome to them. Jam belongs in two places: (1) on toast or (2) in doughnuts. Nowhere else!

(Are doughnuts a pastry or a bread or what?)

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Swiss Roll!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Now you're just making trouble.

Swiss Rolls are clearly cakes. :-p

[ajr.livejournal.com]

How do you make a Swiss roll? Push him down a hill.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

What, you can't put jam on a cake!?

And what about the Jaffa Cake?

[(Anonymous)]

Indeed - Niall, do you deny the righteousness of the Victoria sponge?

-- Tom

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I refute it thus.

*kicks a victoria sponge across the room*

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome to them. Jam belongs in two places: (1) on toast or (2) in doughnuts. Nowhere else!

Weirdo.

(Are doughnuts a pastry or a bread or what?)

I don't care, as long as I can eat them. :D

[(Anonymous)]

Hang on - WTF is a jam danish? I've seen cinnamon, custard, apricot, peach melba, even strawberry and cream (in Tesco at the moment - really not good), but never jam.

-- Tom

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

This baking site would appear to clear things up. A croissant, and apparently a Danish pastry, are clearly bread/pastry hybrids.

Croissants and Danish pastries are made from bread-like dough, and laminated in a pastry style, like puff-pastry, which uses a pastry-like dough. Pastry dough contains no yeast for leavening; pastry leavening is done by steam between the layers. Croissant dough contains small amounts of yeast; not as much as full bread dough, but this does make it clearly bread-like.

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW, here's my bakery taxonomy, somewhat extended from the version i presented at Caption:

OPTAOIA - baked goods
ZYMOIDES - leavened baked things
ARTOSA - breads
SACCHAROSITOSOIDEA - cakes
KARYOSTAITOODES - doughnuts
PEMMA - unleavened baked things
AZYMOSA - unleavened bread
METAPATISSERIA - pastries in the general sense
EUPATISSERIA - true pastries
ELATERA - shortbread and gingerbread
VIENNOISERIA - viennoiserie
EPISELENIDAEA - croissants
NASTOIA - cheesecake
PALATHEA - panforte and allied cakes

Biscuits are cognate, but do not fall under this taxon.

HTH.

-- Tom

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, and here that is in a LJ-proof but Mozilla-manglerable format:

• OPTAOIA - baked goods
  
  
  
  • ZYMOIDES - leavened baked things
    
    
    
    • ARTOSA - breads
    
    
    • SACCHAROSITOSOIDEA - cakes
      
      
      
      • KARYOSTAITOODES - doughnuts
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • PEMMA - unleavened baked things
    
    
    
    • AZYMOSA - unleavened bread
    
    
    • METAPATISSERIA - pastries in the general sense
      
      
      
      • EUPATISSERIA - true pastries
        
        
        
        • ELATERA - shortbread and gingerbread
        
        
        
        
      
      
      • VIENNOISERIA - viennoiserie
        
        
        
        • EPISELENIDAEA - croissants
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • NASTOIA - cheesecake
    
    
    • PALATHEA - panforte and allied cakes
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Niall, if you want to replace the original with this, feel free.

-- Tom

[ex-toastie256.livejournal.com]

please indicate where the following fall in your taxonmy:

1) Crumpets
2) Jaffa Cakes
3) Hob Nobs

[jinty]

he already said biscuits are cognate but do not fall under this taxonomy. A hob nob is clearly a biscuit, ergo...

Plus I reckon a crumpet is a kind of bread. Perhaps it should have its own subentry under Artosa.

[(Anonymous)]

More or less.

Crumpets aren't bread; they're not kneaded. At first glance, it would appear that they belong in a new taxon under Zymoides, but actually, they're a kind of pancake; they're made with a milky batter and cooked in a frying-pan. Yes, they're leavened, but the modern approach to taxonomy classifies by phylogeny, not form (and bear in mind that American pancakes are also leavened, with baking powder, at least according to the governor of Illinois (http://www.virtualcities.com/ons/il/gov/ilgovgr10.htm)). Pancakes do not fall under this taxonomy.

The question of jaffa cakes is indeed a tough one. However, the noted authority on biscuits, Nicey, has categorically stated (in his 'Biscuits Explained (http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/biscuits/index.php3)' - see the FAQ) that he considers them cakes, as "apart from being called cakes they obviously have a sponge base". Therefore, i would classify them as cakes.

Hob-nobs are very obviously biscuits, and so different.

Scones, though - is a scone a cake?

-- Tom

[(Anonymous)]

OH GOD - CORN BREAD (http://www.basic-recipes.com/bds/johnnycash.htm)!

-- tom

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

A scone is clearly a baked good. Kneaded and baked (quickly). Have you properly distinguished between cakes and US-style muffins (which are sort of like soda bread in that they are leavened with soda, but critically you need to mix them very quickly so that the gluten doesn't start doing its thing, or they become tough.)