River Cottage A-Z

For most pastries (shortcrust, rough puff and puff) your butter (or other fat) should be cold, and cut into small dice (5–10mm cubes) or grated coarsely, directly into the flour. The old-fashioned way is to combine butter with some lard as well. Butter lends an incomparable flavour, while lard contains almost no water and is very good for giving the pastry a particularly pleasing ‘short’ texture.

The idea then is to incorporate the fat into the flour – by rubbing the two together in the case of shortcrust – so the cold fat forms a coating over the flour particles. This stops the flour absorbing too much water when you add it later, and therefore inhibits the formation of gluten strands, which would make the pastry tough. (Warm or melted butter coats the flour too much, making it harder for the pastry to bind together at all.) Minimal working is the second crucial factor here, as kneading the pastry also develops gluten. This means a light touch with your hands, or the use of a mixer with a special pastry blade.

You then need to mix in just enough water, milk or egg (or a combination thereof) – again, very cold – to bring the pastry together into big clumps. Err on the side of less water rather than more. A light, brief kneading, just to get the dough to come together in one lump is all that’s required.

The pastry should then be patted into a disc, wrapped in cling film and chilled for about 30 minutes. This allows the fat to solidify and the gluten strands to ‘relax’, giving you lighter, crumblier pastry when cooked. Flattening it into a disc rather than leaving it as a ball will make it easier to roll out once it has firmed up.

Pastry generally needs to go cold into a hot oven – the high temperature ‘sets’ the gluten network in the pastry before the butter can fully melt. If the oven temperature is too low, the butter melts while the flour/water dough is still soft and you get soggy, heavy pastry.

TYPES OF PASTRY

Shortcrust pastry This is the basic flour, fat and water mix. The classic proportions are two parts flour to one part butter, with a little water or milk, and sometimes an egg yolk to bind. It can be adapted to make sweet shortcrust by adding icing sugar, chocolate pastry by adding cocoa powder and sugar, or wholemeal pastry by using brown flour. Wholemeal pastry is not as light as standard shortcrust, but it is good in certain recipes, notably those involving cheese.

Pâte sablée A rich, sweet shortcrust, this is made with a higher proportion of butter, as well as egg and sugar. It has a ‘sandy’ texture, hence the name. Sometimes ground almonds are included too.

Puff pastry This is made by encasing a large, rectangular piece of butter within a simple dough, then rolling out, folding, turning and re-rolling repeatedly, in order to build up a ‘laminated’ dough encasing many thin layers of butter. When baked, trapped air expands, while the fat melts and releases steam, puffing up the pastry into many delicious, crisp wafer-thin layers.

Flaky and rough puff pastries These are similar to puff but usually made by mixing rough chunks of fat into the dough, rather than enclosing a block, before rolling and folding.

Filo, strudel and brik pastries These are all paper-thin forms of pastry, made from a basic dough and used in several layers, each layer brushed with fat. Filo and strudel doughs are made by rolling and stretching. Preparing brik or warka pastry is an extraordinary art: a ball of soft dough is slapped against a hot plate so that a wafer-thin layer adheres to it and cooks – definitely one for the experts. These pastries all dry out very easily and become fragile and hard to handle so, when working with them, it’s important to keep the unused pastry covered with a damp cloth.

Hot water crust pastry A strong pastry, this is ideal for substantial pies that need to contain a dense, heavy, juicy filling. Melting lard in lots of boiling water, then stirring in the flour (pretty much the opposite of what you do when making a light shortcrust) creates a strong gluten network, resulting in a robust, malleable pastry. Some strong bread flour may be included.

Choux pastry This is quite different from other pastries. It is made by heating water and butter in a pan then beating in flour, followed by eggs. The resulting soft dough is, again, quite strong. It’s used to make choux buns and éclairs that puff up spectacularly in the oven, creating hollow centres that can be filled (usually with cream).