Perfect your pastry
No-Fail Pie Crust
The word pastry covers a lot of ground, from the madeleines Marcel Proust dipped in his coffee every morning to the crust of Beef Wellington to doughnuts and chocolate éclairs. Pastry manifests itself in thousands of sweet and savoury recipes: there's puff pastry, choux pastry, phyllo pastry and many more. And each type has its own variations. Some say pastry-making is an art that takes a lifetime to master. But what if you don't have a lifetime? What are the pastry essentials?
The Pie Crust
For most home cooks the basic pastry-making challenge is the pie crust, a kind of shortcrust, or pâté brisée. Like all pastry, pie crust is simply a combination of fat, flour and liquid. The magic is in how you put it together.
Choux Pastry
Fancy making your own éclairs or profiteroles? It might not be as daunting a task as you think. Choux pastry is made by boiling water and butter, then tipping in the flour to form a moist ball of dough to which egg is added. This slightly more ambitious form of pastry making may take a little practice, but the process is very simple and within reach of anybody who has an oven, a mixing bowl and a saucepan. Remember always to use choux pastry dough right away, so it doesn't dry out.
Puff Pastry
When you imagine yourself sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris, a café au lait in one hand, what's in the other? Probably a puff pastry, a vol au vent or palmier. This prince of pastries (pâté feuilletée to you) is definitely the most labour intensive. Those dozens of light, crispy layers are formed by pressing together a layer of dough and a layer of butter, and then folding the dough over and over. During baking, the several layers of butter and dough sandwiched together cause the unleavened dough to rise to as much as twelve times its original height.
Phyllo Pastry
This papery pastry from eastern Europe and Greece, similar to strudel pastry, has become a very popular accessory in North American cuisine. Phyllo pastry dough is easy to find in grocery stores beside the pie shells, so few people bother to make it from scratch. But like most doughs, phyllo dough is fairly simple to make, as long as you have the patience to roll out those ultra-thin sheets. The main difference between phyllo and other pastries is that oil is used as the fatty component instead of butter, margarine, lard or vegetable shortening.
Share your pastry secrets with other readers in our forums.
For most home cooks the basic pastry-making challenge is the pie crust, a kind of shortcrust, or pâté brisée. Like all pastry, pie crust is simply a combination of fat, flour and liquid. The magic is in how you put it together.
Choux Pastry
Fancy making your own éclairs or profiteroles? It might not be as daunting a task as you think. Choux pastry is made by boiling water and butter, then tipping in the flour to form a moist ball of dough to which egg is added. This slightly more ambitious form of pastry making may take a little practice, but the process is very simple and within reach of anybody who has an oven, a mixing bowl and a saucepan. Remember always to use choux pastry dough right away, so it doesn't dry out.
Puff Pastry
When you imagine yourself sitting at a sidewalk café in Paris, a café au lait in one hand, what's in the other? Probably a puff pastry, a vol au vent or palmier. This prince of pastries (pâté feuilletée to you) is definitely the most labour intensive. Those dozens of light, crispy layers are formed by pressing together a layer of dough and a layer of butter, and then folding the dough over and over. During baking, the several layers of butter and dough sandwiched together cause the unleavened dough to rise to as much as twelve times its original height.
Phyllo Pastry
This papery pastry from eastern Europe and Greece, similar to strudel pastry, has become a very popular accessory in North American cuisine. Phyllo pastry dough is easy to find in grocery stores beside the pie shells, so few people bother to make it from scratch. But like most doughs, phyllo dough is fairly simple to make, as long as you have the patience to roll out those ultra-thin sheets. The main difference between phyllo and other pastries is that oil is used as the fatty component instead of butter, margarine, lard or vegetable shortening.
Share your pastry secrets with other readers in our forums.
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