‘Pastry Secrets’ arrive just in time for Sukkos

Babka. Strudel. Stollen. Danish pastry. Not to mention Gugelhopf and Charlotte. The names set the mouth to watering and conjure up lovingly concocted pastries that feed the body and comfort the soul. If you didn’t have a grandmother who baked these delicacies, you wish that you had.

George Greenstein was never a grandmother, but his life as a baker provided his children and grandchildren with memories infused with the smell of fresh baked bread and rugelach. His daughters, Julia and Elaine, and grandson Isaac were determined to pass on his legacy in the form of a cookbook that George wrote but failed to publish before his death in July 2012. 

Isaac Bleicher told JNS.org that, although they knew a manuscript of the book existed, no one in the family had ever seen it. As they cleared out Greenstein’s apartment following his death, the moment when they discovered the book on his computer was stunning. “Should we publish it?” someone suggested to the suddenly silent room. A year-and-a-half-long labor of love in bringing the book to publication paid tribute to the lifelong labor of love Greenstein performed through his baking. 

Greenstein’s first book, “Secrets of a Jewish Baker,” won the James Beard Book Award, but covered only breads. This new book, “A Jewish Baker’s Pastry Secrets,” is a wonderful companion to the first, enabling the cook to bring a meal to its magnificent conclusion, though some recipes are adaptable as savory side dishes. Particularly intriguing is the “cabbage strudel,” the recipe for which George’s father Louis brought from Gyöngyös, a formerly prominently Jewish town near Budapest (by way of British Palestine, son-in-law Paul Bleicher told JNS.org), in around 1924. 

The book is organized by “master recipes” for many types of dough—including bundt, babka, strudel, gugelhopf, and Portuguese sweet bread, stollen, puff pastry, charlotte (a combination of puff pastry and shortbread), and Danish—which is then used to create many variations on the theme. Puff pastry, for example, is the basis for palmiers, apple turnovers, cream horns, and Napoleons.