Making Pastry at Home - Basic Cooking Guides

Pastry Making - Basic Guide

Basic guide to making pastry - for individual types of pastry, see below.

Pastry Ingredients:

Flour:

Use good quality flour for pastry making. It should be quite dry and it is necessary to always sieve before use to remove any lumps and introduce air. This helps to lighten the pastry. Self-raising flour can be used for short crust or suet pastry but better results are obtained if plain flour is used for richer pastries.

Fats:

The fats with the best flavour and shortening qualities for pastries are generally butter or lard, which makes the pastry rich and crisp. Margarine can be used to replace butter and there are several “hard” block vegetable fats/white margarine that can be used in place of lard.

Salt:

A little salt is advisable in pastry to improve the flavour.

Water:

Water is the most suitable mixing liquid and should and cold and fresh. For rich pastries a little lemon juice is often used to help make the pastry crisper.

General Pastry Making Tips:

All ingredients and utensils should be kept as cool as possible. Your hands can be cooled by allowing cold water to run over the wrists.
The pastry should be handled as little and lightly as possible.
Add only sufficient water to mix evenly to a pliable dough. Too much water will make the pastry hard. Streakiness in the pastry can be avoided if all the water needed is added at once.
Knead lightly with the fingertips drawing the edges of dough towards the centre, turning the pastry on a lightly floured board.
Roll out with short sharp strokes of the rolling pin away from you. Turn the pastry not the rolling pin. Some rich pastries are improved if allowed to cool and relax between rolling.
Collect all equipment needed and weigh up the ingredients before starting the pastry.
When a recipe calls for a certain weight of pastry, this weight refers to the amount of flour used and not to the total amount of pastry. For example, if a recipe says you need 4 oz (112 g) Short Crust Pastry, it means that you start off with 4 oz (112 g) flour and then add all the other ingredients.
Pastry freezes well, baked or unbaked, except Hot Water Pastry and Suet Pastry.

Choice and Preparation of Cooking Utensils

Metal plates or baking tins will give the greatest degree of under browning. This degree of under browning decreases with the use of plates made of thin china, fireproof glass, thick china or earthenware, in that order. The under browning may be improved if plates used for cooking plate tarts etc have absolutely flat bases and are stood upon a baking tray for cooking. The baking tray should be put in the position on the shelf whilst the oven is heating up.

Baking sheets or other utensils used for cooking the less rich pastries such as short crust, may be either lightly greased or left entirely un-greased. A flan ring and the baking sheet on which a flan is cooked should be well greased to prevent the pastry sticking.

Utensils used for baking pastries made with flaky, rough puff, or puff pastry should not be greased. For best results rinse or sprinkle the utensil with cold water before the pastries are put on it.

Pastry Making Guides & Information

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