Bakery Case Icon · Rolled Pastry

Rugelach

Photo: Douglas W. Jones / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

One Mahane Yehuda bakery's version made Saveur's list of the 100 best foods on Earth in 2010 — for a pastry whose Yiddish name just means 'little twists.'

A yeasted, croissant-like dough is rolled around chocolate, cinnamon-walnut, or even halva filling, then curled into small crescents and baked until the layers flake apart. Market stalls and bakery windows around Mahane Yehuda pile them fresh out of the oven every morning.

Why it's made this way: Hungarian and Polish Jewish immigrants brought the kneaded, rolled dough technique with them to Jerusalem, and it became such a fixture of the city's bakeries that Mahane Yehuda's Marzipan bakery built its reputation largely on the pastry.