Sep 12: Why you should have coffee and croissants today

Back to the Battle of Vienna

06/12/08

One thing I noticed very early on in the development of joepastry.com was how often I kept coming upon references to the Battle of Vienna. It seemed like every time I delved into the history of this or that piece of Viennoiserie I found one. “The development of this bread can be traced back to the Battle of Vienna in 1683.” The croissant, the brioche, the bagel…all of them are tied to it. That was one momentous, baking-intensive battle, no?

But what exactly was the Battle of Vienna? Though most people today aren’t familiar with it, the Battle of Vienna was possibly the critical battle in modern European history — the point at which the Ottoman Turks, who at the time seemed poised to overrun all of Europe and extinguish once and for all Christian rule, the nation state system and emerging concepts of individual rights and democracy, were routed by a combined army of Habsburgs and Poles. As I said we don’t think much about the battle now, but at the time it was considered, you know, important.

So where do the breads come into it? Folks who’ve followed the site for a while already know the story: It was a gloomy night in Vienna. For two long months the Ottoman Turks under Pasha Kara Mustafa had been laying siege to the city. Supplies were dwindling, morale was low, the aura of doom was palpable. Down to the last of their precious flour stores, a group of bakers worked methodically onward in their shop that abutted the city wall. It was the wee small hours of the morning when suddenly: tap, tap, tap…tap, tap, tap. The bakers looked up at one another. What on Earth could that be? And then suddenly they realized: the Ottomans! They’re tunneling into the city! Quick! Raise the alarm! No — wait! Let’s bake something! An edible symbol of impending doom!

Well OK, so they don’t always bake first (except in the croissant version). Some iterations have them running out and sounding the alarm. In others they pick up whatever implements are at hand and take on the Turks themselves, presumably impaling the bad guys on whisks and icing spatulas. But the story always ends with the Turks defeated, the populace grateful, and the bakers given sole rights to baking and selling the whatever-they-came-up-with by royal decree.

I gotta admit, it’s a fun story. Personally I like the image of swarthy, bare-chested Austrian bakers toiling away in their shop, just waiting for an excuse to go kick some Ottoman can. It offers me the happy illusion that instead of being fussy foodie primadonnas, we pastry types are actually widow-makers in waiting. That inside every Jacques Torresthere’s a Chuck Norris waiting to get out. Yeah, well, a guy can dream.

Like just about every other phony food history story, these tall tales have interchangeable parts. They can take place either in 1683 during the Battle of Vienna, or in 1529 during the Siege of Vienna. Both pitted Europeans against Turks, though in the Siege of 1529 there was a lot more tunneling (the battle is also called the “Siege of the Moles” for that reason). Alternately, it can happen during the Battle of Buda(pest) in 1686, though in that battle it was the Europeans who were besieging the Turks. Well heck, Turks like bagels too don’t they? Don’t they?

http://www.joepastry.com/2008/back_to_the_battle_of_vienna/