WAFER?
Wafer?
Wafer?!... Nothing special?!
Maybe but only at first glance.
An interesting product which has sweetened people's lives for so many centuries and which has its own long and interesting history.
Holland! The 7th century. A strange meal was steaming on the table. For the first time in old Holland, creative householders had served up an unusual dessert. It was baked in a special shape, making its pastry extremely crunchy. That was why they called it a 'waffle' – a crunchy cake, the father of today's 'wafer'. The Dutch were naive to believe that it would be easy to hide such a delight from the rest of the world. And because the sweet was so delicious, little by little it began to appear in the households of neighbouring countries. From there the wafer’s march around the world began.
The Middle Ages in Europe! The 13th century. About 400 years had passed since the first wafer was produced and its production had already turned into a separate profession. For the first time, wafer producers in France struck out alone, forming a guild and obtaining the right to bake and sell wafers. Baked by hand, wafers had shapes that looked like a pair of pliers with long handles, all with the same pattern – a honeycomb. But in time it so happened that a baker would replace the honeycomb with another original pattern. Thus on medieval wafers different patterns started to appear: leaves, suns, rhomboids and small interwoven triangles.
Chicago! The World Exposition, 1893. Crowds of people gathered around a machine. Steam was rising from it but people were milling around it because the fragrance smelled really delicious and what is more, they had never seen such a miracle: a machine that prepared desserts on its own. Wafers now had another shape, between each thin layer of pastry different kinds of delicious fillings had appeared. This is how confectioners made people prefer wafers to other desserts.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire! The 1880s and 1890s. Two products emerged from the extremely diverse range of products in the confectionery industry to become exceptionally popular – the thin circle-shaped 'Karlsbader Oblaten' and the the tiny 'Neapolitaner', consisting of five small wafer layers and four layers of filling. Even today, if walking around the pastry shops and hypermarkets of Austria and Germany, everybody can see and taste them. Their production technology has been modernised but they are still as popular as before.
Central Europe! The 1920s. There was now no country that did not know the wafer. Packaging arrived with the aim of keeping wafers crunchy and tasty and safe from unhealthy external conditions. Inside the packaging hid an incredibly delicious, fragrant and crunchy, long or circle-shaped wafer, tempting even the most sophisticated connoisseurs of sweets and confectionery.
Today! Is there a place in the world where you can’t find your favourite wafer? And is there anyone who doesn't actually know what a WAFER is? It is sure that the world has never known such a variety of delicious and fragrant, tasty and crunchy, large and small wafers!
Have you chosen your wafer yet?! If not, it's high time you did! |
