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Pastry 101 - Introduction |
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From
Pie & Tart Crusts
to
Pâte ŕ Choux, making homemade pastry making
can be intimidating to both the experienced and novice bakers (it was to me at
first, too). Flakiness is the chief
attribute of well-made pastry--and the most elusive; it's tricky to make,
requires practice, precision and just the right touch.
 If
you don't want to make your own, don't despair -- there are ready-made
puff pastry
and
phyllo dough
available in the freezer section of the supermarket. They are easy to use
and quite good. Look for the all-natural kinds. Two ready-made puff pastry
brands are well worth trying: Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets and Classic
Puff Pastry from Dufour Pastry Kitchens. |
There are seven main types of pastry
with variations that
may have characteristics of more than one type.
The chief difference between pastry types is
the method of introducing the fat in the recipe, and of course ingredients,
mixing and baking techniques. In pie crusts and short pastries, chilled fat is
rubbed into the flour. In the puff and flaky types, the fat is rolled into the
dough through a process called "turns". In hot-water crusts and choux pastry,
the fat is melted in hot liquid before being added to the flour, all done on the
stovetop. There is also a shortcrust made with cooking oil and a pastry made
from yeast dough.
| PASTRY
TYPES: Some, like their pastry ancestors, are relatively durable
since they need to stand up by themselves or become containers for fillings;
some are tender and flaky, some are ethereally light, while others are
denser in nature.
Flaky
(Pie and Tart Crust)
and
Shortcrust:
:
Shortcrust includes pastries which are of a crumbly rather than a flaky
texture – shortcrust, flan pastry (also called biscuit crust) and suetcrust.
Shortcrust is the most widely used for
pies, tarts, turnovers and pasties, both sweet and savory. Flan
pastry is used for sweet tarts, etc., and suetcrust
for sweet and savory puddings, which may be steamed, boiled or baked. Cheese
pastry is another short type used for making cheese straws.
The simplest and most commonly used for pie
and tart crusts is flaky pastry dough, sometimes known as medium flake. A
basic recipe involves
taking flour, fat, water and salt. The chilled fat is cut into cubes and
rubbed or cut-into the flour and
salt, previously mixed then a minimum of ice water is added until the dough
barely comes together. Good flaky pastry is judged by the evenness of the
flakes and their distribution.
Pie and tart crust recipes sometimes include
added sugar and an egg. The result is cookie-like, crumbly and sweet. If it
has little sugar and no eggs, it is called
Pate
brisee (meaning broken textured pastry in French). If it is
sweetened with a large dose of sugar with an added egg, it is then called
Pate sucree (sweet
pastry in French), also called Pate seche (dry pastry in French). Tender
pastry ingredients can also include cream cheese, baking powder, vinegar,
ground nuts
and other ingredients.
Puff Pastry:
Puff Pastry gives the most even rising, most flaky effect and
crispest texture from "rolled in butter" and is also referred to as a
laminate dough.
Danish are made from similar
techniques, but Danish is made from a yeast dough.
Choux (Pâte
ŕ Choux): Choux pastry is a paste
prepared by beating eggs into a thick mixture of flour, fat and liquid, and
cooking until smooth. The eggs probvide the leavening and "puff". It
is used chiefly for éclairs, profiteroles, cream buns, rich fancy cakes and
savory or sweet recipes.
Phyllo (Filo) Dough
and the like, such as Strudels, etc.
Phyllo dough is made by flour and water only, which is kneaded and stretched
so thin that it looks like tissue paper. The dough can encase a filling, and
brushed with butter in between the layers, after baking it resembles puff
pastry. In strudel pastry, it includes added fat and egg, plus a little
vinegar.
Hot
Water Crust: (Not discussed in detail here.) This is a
type of pastry made by melting lard in boiling water and pouring the mixture
onto the flour and is kneaded to a dough. It is used for making 'raised
pies'. The pastry is molded around a suitable container before being filled
with veal, ham or a pork filling.
Suetcrust:
(Not discussed in detail here.) In suetcrust the main
ingredient is chopped suet. It is best used with savory fillings.
Sweet Dough:
encompass a wide variety of
pastries. This usually includes yeast-raised recipes such as
Cinnamon
Buns,
Raised Doughnuts,
sweet rolls, hot cross buns, coffee cakes, pannetone,
Brioche,
Danish pastry and
Croissants.
Sometimes the broader category of
breakfast foods is used or other chemically leavened doughs like
Puff Pastry,
Sponge Cake
,
Pound Cake
and cake doughnuts. Many recipes are finished with fillings and toppings,
such as icings, glazes, fruit jellies, nuts, etc. with a more breadlike
texture.
Sweet dough is made from wheat flour
(all-purpose) with a relatively high percentage of sugar in the dough.
Some potato flour or rice starch can be
added for lightness. When I make my light and fluffy
Cinnamon
Buns, I substitute 2 tablespoons flour with 1/4 cup potato flour.
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BASIC RULES FOR PASTRY MAKING:
General Hints for Pastry-making
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For best results, keep everything cold.
Use cold hands, a cold marble top, pastry
board or worktop and water. (To keep my hands cold, I
fill a resealable plastic bag with ice and then hold it in my palms for a few
seconds, when I need to or run them under cold water and then dry.) Handle the
pastry as little as possible and always use the finger-tips,
the coolest part of the hands.
The dough os placed in a refrigerator between rollings so that the pastry
remains firm.
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Always sift the flour and salt, after
measuring, together into the mixing bowl; this helps to lighten the mixture.
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Chill the liquid in the refrigerator before
use. The liquid parts (water, eggs, etc.) of the recipe should be very cold.
Be careful not to overdo it - an excess of liquid causes a sticky,
unmanageable dough and any extra flour then added will make it tough.
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Rolling out must be done using firm, light
strikes, rolling in one direction only and rotating the dough between "rolls".
Avoid stretching the pastry as this causes
shrinkage in baking.
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Pastry requires a hot,
well-preheated oven. Too low
an oven temperature causes pale, hard and flat pastry.
PASTRY INGREDIENTS:
The very nature of most pastries is to
be light, airy, flaky, and buttery. All pastry starts out as a combination of
ingredients, such as flour, water,
salt, butter or other fats, and is made by
using different ingredients, mixing and baking techniques.
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In puff pastry, a certain amount of gluten
formation is essential, but all of the gluten strands must lie in one plane
to give strength to the horizontal sheets. Here, the folding and rolling
technique is used. |
Flour:
Different types produce different results. When moistened and stirred, wheat
flour develops strands of gluten, which are what give an elastic structure to
the baked good, that stretches and rises. Too much flour results in a tough, dry
and flavorless recipe, and too little results in a flat, tough and flavorless
baked good.
Gluten strands make it tough to roll out for
flaky pie crust dough, to stretch it for phyllo or strudel doughs, or to make
more layers for puff pastry, but on the other hand, gluten strands make it
possible to stretch a pastry recipe for flakiness and texture. Gluten is like a
rubber band, and when stretched from rolling or pulling, they want to snap the
dough back into their original shape. (For
more about gluten). To counteract this, it is essential that the pastry
dough relax for 1 to 2 hours or more in the refrigerator to relax the gluten,
making it easier to stretch or roll it further. If done properly the dough will
shrink less and will be flakier.
Fats:
The differences in textures of many pastries has to do
with the type of fats and how it's introduced. Fats contribute to
the tenderness (shortness) and especially flakiness of pastry. Pure fats, such
as shortening and lard, produce to flakier pastry than those that contain water
such as butter. Pastry is often a trade-off between flavor and texture, much of
which comes from the fat in the recipe. Some bakers use both butter and
shortening to capture the best qualities of each, but I prefer to use all butter
because of its better taste.
Fats contribute to the flakiness and tenderness
of pastry by being layered in between sheets of thin dough. It can also be cut
in or rubbed into the flour as pea-sized shapes before the final dough is made.
The fat melts during baking, leaving air spaces. When placed in the oven, the
flour starches set around the fat, leaving a layer or space when the fat melts
which is reabsorbed back into the dough. The longer the fats take to melt in the
oven, the more well defined the air cells. The melting point of shortening is
higher than that of butter, and it stays solid longer. As a result, it forms
better flaky pastry, but without the butter's wonderful flavor.
Cold butter or fats and the flakiness of the pastry are
intricately connected. Because butter has
such a low melting point, it must be well-chilled to ensure that it can
withstand being rolled and handled without melting to produce flakiness. Butter
that is too soft surrounds the flour particles rather than forming spaces, and
the final texture of the pastry is flat and greasy.
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Don't use
low-fat or reduced-fat products in your
pastry recipe. Their water content is too high for pastry making.
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Leaveners:
Steam acts as the raising agent in puff and flaky pastries. In choux pastry the
raising agents are eggs plus steam. Baking powder and baking soda can be used to
leaven. The yeast in Croissants and
Danish depend upon the thin layers of butter to "help" the yeast; the fat
particles produce steam from the water in the butter (butter is 81 % fat and 19
% water) when baked, and that from yeast, gives them their light and flaky
texture.
Water or Liquids:
a minimum amount of cold water or liquids, such as milk, should be used.
However, too little water in pastry causes the pastry to be crumbly and dry; too
much, plus overmixing, develops too much gluten which causes a tough pastry.
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