Top Pastry Tips (2024)

FAQs

Top Pastry Tips? ›

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

The first golden rule of making pastry; keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible.

General rules

Measure the ingredients carefully. Use good quality flour. Mix together the flour and salt by sieving. Keep everything as cool as possible otherwise the fat may melt which would spoil the finished dish.

The first golden rule of making shortcrust pastry is to keep the ingredients, the bowl, the surface, and your hands as cool as possible. When the pastry mixture becomes too warm, the end result is a greasy and/or heavy, dull finished pastry crust. Run your hands under cold water before starting to mix pastry.

If the dough is overworked, it can become tough and difficult to roll out. This can happen if the dough is kneaded too much or if too much flour is added during the rolling process. Shortcrust pastry can shrink during baking if it's not properly chilled beforehand or if it's rolled too thin.

A good pastry is light and airy and fatty, but firm enough to support the weight of the filling. When making a shortcrust pastry, care must be taken to blend the fat and flour thoroughly before adding any liquid---to ensure that the flour granules are adequately coated with fat and less likely to develop gluten.

There are five main types of pastry dough for creating pastries: flaky, shortcrust, puff, choux and filo. All of them are made primarily from flour, water and fat. However, these five types of pastry dough each have slightly different core ingredients, different ratios of ingredients and, ultimately, different uses.

Plain flours are best for pastry because their gluten strands are relaxed while the stronger gluten in bread flours can cause pastry to shrink back. Warm pastry cooked in an oven that was not pre-heated can collapse as its water evaporates before the pastry cooks and hardens.

How long should pastry dough rest? ›

The initial dough should be rough in look. Don't overwork or it will become elastic and make rolling out very difficult. Rest the dough for 60 mins in the fridge before making the turns. Keep track of the number of turns you give the pastry by making a small indentation in the top of the dough.

Pastry must always be chilled in a fridge after making. This helps it to relax which in turn will help to prevent it shrinking on baking. Additionally, instead of trimming excess pastry from a tart case before baking blind you could also leave it overhanging the tin.

Oven temperature too low; cold pastry put over hot filling; too much liquid in filling or too little filling. Insufficient liquid; too little kneading; liquid not boiling when added to flour.

Problem: Your Pastry is Crumbly

Adding too much fat and overmixing or adding too little liquid can make the pastry crumbly. It is vital to weigh ingredients carefully and handle the dough gently.

The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.

Egg yolks added to shortcrust pastry make it richer and slows down the development of the gluten in the flour, which is exactly what you want.

Hands off. It is important to handle the pastry as little as possible when mixing and rolling. Overworking it will 'develop' the gluten in the flour, which can make the pastry hard to roll. Overworked pastry is also more likely shrink during cooking and to be tough in texture once cooked.

A good pastry should be light, flaky and tender, which requires careful measurement and handling of ingredients during the making process. The lightness of a pastry depends on the amount of air fused into the dough after adding baking powder.