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Making Terrific Pastry Doesn’t Need To Be Tough

Lots of us will shy away from making pastry just because we think it’s going to be a difficult process. We’re concerned it won’t work out and so we avoid it.

Yes, there are a lot of ways you can really mess up pastry. It can have too much flour, or too little, too much fat or too little, too much liquid, or too little. It can get wrapped around the rolling pin and just not roll out at all. Sometimes it will break as you try to place it in the pie plate. There are numerous things that can go wrong.

Well, it truly doesn’t need to be that tough. With just a few tips and suggestions, you can put all of that heartache behind you and make baking tips each and every time.

We all need to know certain things about how to make and handle pastry dough. You can find no end of recipes for all kinds of pastry online, in cookbooks, in magazines and I’m sure you get lots of suggestions from friends as well.

Don’t make things tougher than they need to be. Personally, I believe there are just a few simple rules for handling pastry and only one perfect pastry recipe.

Using a Pastry Blender
To work the lard (you heard that right – lard) into the flour, I prefer a basic manual pastry blender. Some recipes suggest using a couple of knives to work it in. I’ve also seen suggestions on how to “rub” the lard in with your hands. For me, my old standby is a totally basic pastry blender. I find it does the best job and gives me consistent results.

Using Lard
So, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking you can make a low-fat, healthy pastry. Many pastry recipes use vegetable shortening and not lard. But that still doesn’t make it diet-friendly. Sorry – pastry is not a low-fat food. Even still, it’s really, really tasty! And my favorite pastry recipe uses lard.

Using Both Hands
Now that you’ve worked in the lard and added the liquid, let’s get in there with our hands. Producing perfect pastry dough is also about feel. Yes, you’re going to get stuff all over your hands but you’ll also get a wonderfully flaky pastry.

Chill Out
I usually make my pastry dough a bit sticky to start with. That way I have the option to add more flour when I’m working with it, without drying it out too much. When at room temperature, a stickier dough can be a bit more difficult to work with. Once the dough is well mixed and still a bit sticky (not sticking to your fingers though), you can cover it and let it chill in the fridge for about an hour before you attempt to roll it out. The chilled dough will be a lot easier to work with.

Visit Victoria House Bakery for more baking tips and for the flakiest pastry recipe EVER.
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Sugar Baby: Confections, Candies, Cakes & Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Sugar $19.38 Book annotation not available for this title.Title: Sugar BabyAuthor: Bullock-prado, Gesine/ Rupp, Tina (PHT)Publisher: Harry N Abrams IncPublication Date: 2011/04/01Number of Pages: 251Binding Type: HARDCOVERLibrary of Congress: 2010037768…