Tag: pastry

Cranberry and Whisky Luxury Christmas Mince Pies.

Cranberry and Whisky Luxury Christmas Mince Pies.

The festive period looms and it’s time to begin thinking about my Christmas Mince Pies and organising things to make the period as enjoyable and stress free as possible. And it’s particularly time for me to think about this year’s mince pies filled with cranberry and whisky mincemeat.

All you need to know about – Eggs

All you need to know about – Eggs

All you need to know about _Eggs. Learn about the egg itself. what each part of an egg can do, and how we can use it in our cooking.

Demystifying Perfect Pastry.

Demystifying Perfect Pastry.

Demystifying perfect pastry is not as daunting as you may think. We will begin by looking at the ingredients and what they do in a dough. We can then move on to understanding how the method of making a dough and how it affects the final result. For this article we are focused on basic sweet and short pastry. Future posts and Food Files will cover more advanced doughs such as Choux, Puff, and Hot Water pastries as well as yeast doughs and breads.

The Basics.

In a nutshell pastry is a dough containing flour, fat, and liquid (water and or egg). Sugar is also used when making pastry for sweets and desserts. While this may seem limiting the variations in combining these ingredients provides us with a range of products with both sweet and savoury uses. Before we begin to dive deeper into the pastry itself, let’s get a understand the ingredients used. If you haven’t already, Look up our posts on Getting to Grips with Pastry and Blind Baking to get a deeper insight into great pastry.

Flour.

White flour on worktop

Most commonly (but not always) in terms of pastry we are discussing milled white wheat flour. The main characteristic of the wheat/flour we are interested in is its protein content and it’s important to use the correct flour for the job in hand. In kitchens we refer to cake flour, plain flour, and strong flour. This is simply a useful reference to the amount of protein in the flour.

Cake Flour. 8-9% protein. Not that easy to find now, most people use plain flour as a replacement. If you want to try it out add roughly 15-20% cornflour to plain flour and sift together, semolina or rice flour can also be used. This is quite a common technique in making shortbread.

Plain Flour, 10-12% protein. Readily available and possible the most common flour found at home. Self-raising flour is simply plain flour with chemical raising agents added.

Strong Flour, 12-16% More commonly used for bread or leavened products. We will cover this in more detail with a later post on bread making.

There are of course many other types of flour available to us including wholemeal versions of the above but rather than get into too much detail here I want to focus on the pastry itself.

For more flour facts look up https://fabflour.co.uk/

Fats.

Unwrapped pack of unsalted butter.

For pastry butter, margarine, or lard can be used. They all do a similar job but in diverse ways.

Butter is best for flavour and should always be unsalted. This can seem odd when most recipes will add salt to the mix be it sweet or savoury but by using unsalted butter, we have total control over the salt content of the dough. Butter also melts at a reasonably low temperature in the region of 30˚c to 35˚c. Now this can be a pain in making the dough if rubbing in the fat, but it means that the fat will melt in the mouth during eating. Other pastry fats like lard melt at a higher temperature 36˚c + which means the fat can solidify in the mouth as if cools.

Not all butters are equal, have a look at the butters on offer where you shop. The use by dates of the salted versions will be much longer than the unsalted versions. Salt is added for flavour but also as a preservative to lengthen the life of the butter. We want our butter to be as fresh as possible with a rich cream natural flavour.

Also have a look at the fat content of the butters, but surely butter is fat? Well not all of it, the fat content will differ according to manufacture and origin. Why is this of interest, well most of the weight of the butter that’s not fat will be moisture. If you have ever melted butter, then poured it into a dish you will have discovered a layer of milky water sitting below the fat.

Now would you just add more liquid into your pastry just for the hell of it? Well, that’s what you are doing by using butter with a flow fat content. Aim to buy a butter with at least 80% fat. Preferably 83% or more if you can.

Lard

If we decide to use lard as our fat source, we don’t need to worry about the moisture content, but the flavour suffers. Also been a firmer fat then butter it’s easier to get a light crumbier pastry. Some chefs like to use half butter, half lard in savoury pastry. I do this for my Christmas mince pies. It gives just the right texture and the last thing I need it a sweet pastry shell combined with a very sweet filling.

Margarine

If using margarine, it must be a hard margarine produced for pastry making, not one of the many blended or soft margarines available. For cake making the margarine can be softer but in pastry we need the firmness of the fat to produce a light finish. This also has the advantage of a very low moisture content which is important as we will see later.

Eggs or Water?

The choice of using egg or water to bind a dough really depends on the method of making the dough and the characteristics you want the dough to have.

A large egg is made up of about 9% fat, 12% protein, and the balance been water and minerals making up the remainder.

Water is of course 100% water and has no ability to hold back gluten or bind a dough together.

The protein in egg will add structure but overdoing it will make the pastry tougher. look up our Food Files page on All you need to know about – Eggs to get a deeper insight on the egg itself.

The fat in the yolk assists the fat in the recipe to hold back the gluten and the yolk also acts as an emulsifier to help hold the water and fat in the recipe together. This in the case of beaten mixes (see my sable recipe) binds the dough together and gives volume

So, in a nutshell using egg will give a dough more structure and reduce the amount of pure water needed to bind the dough. However, the egg will also take away some of the crumbly nature of the cooked pastry. Using water will provide a crumbly texture as long as the dough is not overworked, and the gluten toughened making the pastry chewy.

For more information on eggs look up https://www.egginfo.co.uk

Sugar

Coarse sugar on worktop.

Adding sugar to a rubbed in pastry will of course sweeten the dough but will also make the pastry colour more in baking. Using an unrefined sugar will also enhance the flavour of the pastry.

When making a dough by the creaming method it does both of the above and also cuts though the fat allowing it to distribute though the flour more efficiently and hold back the gluten.

Now if your still with me Well Done!

That’s a lot of info which I hope will allow you to make informed decisions when choosing or amending the pastry recipes you decide to use. Grab a cup of coffee, take a breath and we can more on. Let’s now have a look at the physical process of making the dough.

Going back to the flour information of this post I mentioned the protein content of the flour and how this defined which flour we would use for a particular job. The reason for this is that when hydrated these proteins begin to form a product known as Gluten. Think of it as an elastic bungee holding the dough together.

Gluten can be an advantage to us or a bit of a pain, it forms naturally in a dough, so all a bread dough needs to begin forming gluten is time and water. Working the gluten strengthens it and makes it more elastic. This is an advantage in doughs where we need to the dough to stretch as the gasses in the dough expand in the heat of the oven as in making bread.

With basic pastries this strength is the last thing we need. If you have ever found your pastry has shrunk back down the tin in baking, it’s a sure sign that the dough has been overworked in ether the mixing or rolling out or often in both! When rolling out your pastry, don’t just roll in one direction. Turn the dough as you are rolling to even out the stressing of the dough. If the dough springs back as you try to roll it out, its already too elastic. The best you can do is to pop it into the fridge on the rolling mat to rest for 20 minutes then have another go. Always rest a rolled dough before baking to minimise shrinkage.

So, a key thing is to handle our pastry as little and as lightly as possible. If making the dough on a machine I prefer to let the machine do any rubbing in or creaming but then bring the dough together by hand, so I am in control of the mixing.

Demystifying perfect pastry, the Creaming method.

If you haven’t already check out my Best Sweet Pastry post for a recipe to produce a versatile tart dough. The process is like making shortbread but uses icing sugar which fully incorporates into the dough and has egg for a binding. Any additional moisture needed to bring the dough together is provided by double cream. The net result of this is to use the least water possible to bring the dough together. This gives us a pastry robust enough to be cut and support a filling while not been tough.

The principle of a creamed dough is that the fat having been mixed right through the dough forms a barrier to the gluten forming long strands and toughing the pastry.

Demystifying perfect pastry, the Rubbing in method.

This is the normal procedure for producing shortcrust pastry, the ‘short’ part of the term referring to how well the pastry breaks up in the mouth. Again, controlling the gluten is important to avoid toughness but the primary factor is how we combine the fat into the dough. Temperature is important. Whereas in our creamed dough room temperature is ideal when rubbing in, we need the fat and our tools be Again, as cool as possible.

The idea is to rub the fat into the flour to form fine particles without the fat melting into the flour. Now as I said before butter melts below blood heat so unless you have nimble quick fingers there’s a chance the butter will begin melt before it totally worked in. Dicing the butter then returning it into the fridge helps and a cold mixing bowl is essential.

The easy option is to use a high melting point fat, and this is the most popular option for manufactured pastries. It may say butter on the packet, but its not butter as you know it.

Think of short pastry as a brick wall, if everything is firmly combined it has strength and toughness and is difficult to break though. Now imagine we have gaps in the mortar and the bricks are sandy. The wall is weak and will collapse easily without using a lot of effort.

This is what the fat in the pastry does, having small particles of fat in the dough prevents the gluten forming together while the dough is raw. Then when cooking the fat melts to leave weakness in the pastry which gives the finished pastry its light crumbly nature.

Dealing with pastry, best practice.

In making creamed doughs keep everything at room temperature.

In making rubbed in doughs keep everything cool and use a pastry knife to cut in the fat.

Rest the dough after making and before rolling to give the dough time to bind and relax

When rolling a dough cool the work surface and rolling pin if it’s a warm day. A polypropylene rolling pin is the best option.

Don’t overdo the amount of four used when rolling out, just a dusting should be enough. Too much flour will embed itself into the dough and spoil the pastry when baked.

Work quickly but carefully, turn the dough during rolling to even out the stress of stretching the dough out.

Always rest the rolled dough before baking.

Have the oven preheated to a slightly higher temperature that needed to cook the pastry. Place the goods into the oven then turn down the heat to the cooking temperature. This will help counteract the loss of heat when opening the oven door.

I hope all that information hasn’t overwhelmed you, take a little time to work through it all. Practice makes perfect so give it a go and remember to enjoy your cooking.

Enjoy life!

John.

Blind Baking Made Easy, perfect results every time.

Blind Baking Made Easy, perfect results every time.

Blind baking made easy. make you own tarts and pies at home without fuss.

Pear and Blueberry Frangipane Tart with the best custard sauce.

Pear and Blueberry Frangipane Tart with the best custard sauce.

How to make a pear and blueberry frangipane tart with fresh custard sauce.

Getting to Grips with Pastry

Getting to Grips with Pastry

It’s not as hard as you think

Getting to grips with pastry can be a joy or a nightmare. But with a little confidence and a sprinkling of technique the whole process becomes easy and will allow you to make more interesting and enjoyable pastries and desserts. This blog provides you with my favourite recipes for basic sweet and short pastry. Do look up the Food Files page Demystifying Perfect Pastry for a greater insight into the craft.

The best sweet pastry

This recipe was given to me many years ago by Nico Ladenis, a big bear of a man, daunting to work for but with kind heart. This dates back to his restaurant in Pimlico London. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and was known for asking guest to leave. I have used this recipe ever since, and never had need to change it and use it for most sweet blind baked tarts. It freezes well so while you can reduce the quantities given, its best to make the full recipe and freeze it until needed. If fact it impossible to work with it until it is well chilled. Ideally overnight.

This is referred to as sable pastry, a light slightly sandy pastry not dissimilar to shortbread that produces a crisp tart shell that will hold its shape without been tough. Anything you have leftover, make into biscuits, great with morning coffee.

Sable Pastry

Ingredients, enough to line 4 x 23cm tart shells (3 if your not too hot with the rolling pin).

250g                good quality unsalted butter

250g                icing sugar

4                      large eggs – beaten in a jug

3-5 tbsp          double cream

650g                plain flour

Pinch               salt

sable ingredients

I always make this in a food processor, but it’s not essential, you can use a food mixer or even do it by hand but it’s a lot of work. One crucial thing, make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. Get everything out well ahead and if the room is cold warm everything near a radiator for a while.

creamed butter and sugar

The creaming process.

This is made by the creaming method not unlike some cake mixes. Pop the soft butter into the machine then sieve the icing sugar over the butter. Turn on the machine and process to a smooth buttercream, pulse control is best.

Slowly start adding the egg in a steady stream, if you see the mix beginning to look curdled stop adding egg. This is a sure sign that the mix is too cool and the butter is separating out.

If this happens slightly warm the mix by standing the bowl in some warm water. Don’t overdo it or you will have a butter milkshake.

finished pastry

When all the egg is added, work in 3tbs of the cream then add all the flour in one go and mix in using the pulse control again. Don’t overwork the pastry the last bit of flour is best worked in with a spatula once you have removed the blade from the bowl. If you are having trouble combining it all together add a little more cream.

weighing the dough

The mix will be very soft and impossible to work with at this point. Ideally portion out the dough into the amount you will use at one time I make 4 x 350g balls of dough to line a 23cm x 3.25cm flan tins. If you’re not too hot with the rolling pin just break the dough into 3 equal parts.

wrapping the dough

Basic shortcrust pastry

A great everyday pastry for savoury bakes

To make roughly 350g of pastry

225                 unsalted butter

100g               plain flour

Pinch             table salt

2-3 tbsp         very cold water

For savoury pies try using 110g butter with 110 lard to give a crisper finish.

short pastry ingredients

In contrast to the sweet pastry recipes the most important thing here is to keep everything as cold as possible. As luck would have it on the day, I chose to cover the making of the pastry it was quite warm. To combat this, I diced the butter then returned it to the fridge and put the mixing bowl into the fridge to chill before starting.

Rubbing in.

Weigh the flour into a bowl and place the diced cold butter and salt on top. Using the tips of the fingers rub the butter into the flour until you have a fine breadcrumb texture. If your not overly nimble fingered using a pastry knife will both speed up and keep things cool, improving your pastry.

short pastry dough

Make a well in the mix and add the water. Don’t add it all at once, leave a little behind, the exact amount of water will depend on the flour you are using and the whey content of the butter. if you are using lard you will need a dash more but may not need it all, it possible a dash more is required. Form a ball of about 5 cm in diameter. Wrap the dough and refrigerate or freeze until needed.

Make now, use later.

Give both of these a try, it’s well worth having some in the freezer. having the pastry ready made will encourage you to try out more recipes and it’s so much better that the bought in versions. i will add more pastry recipes and techniques in later blogs lots more baking to come so don’t forget to subscribe for regular blog updates.

Enjoy Life !

John.

Hi, my name is John Webber, award winning chef and tutor, now retired to the west coast of Scotland. Welcome to our blog focusing on food, cooking, and countryside. My aim is to pass on my years of skills and knowledge together with an appreciation of the countryside.

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