EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Beginnings of Puff Pastry

During the eighteenth century, pastry preparations became progressively more elaborate and innovative. This was the age of many of the great names still remembered today: Vatel, Favart, Avice, and the king Stanislas Leszczinski.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the bases of modern pastry making were in place with the discovery of pate feuilletee (puff pastry), followed by pates levees-feuilletees (leavened puff pastries). Near the end of the century, the popularity of Viennese pastry by Marie Antoinette left an important mark, as did the introduction of the ‘kouglof’-Professional Pastries

Puff pastry seems to be relative of the Middle Eastern phyllo and is used in a similar manner to create layered pastries. While traditionally ascribed to the French painter and cook Claude Glee who lived in the 17th century(the story goes the Gelee 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), references appear before the 17th century, indicating a history that came originally through Muslim Spain and was converted from thin sheets of dough spread with olive oil to laminated dough with layers of butter, perhaps in Italy or Germany-Wikipedia