What recipes scare me the most? That’s simple – the ones with only a couple of ingredients that become totally transformed in the cooking process.
At the summit of these terrors sits pastry – and with good reason. In MasterChef, more people have failed with pastry than any other discipline and yet it seems so innocuous.
At its most basic, pastry is no more than 2 parts flour and 1 part fat but the trouble is that there are just so many things that can go wrong – tricky spots where the wrong step can see your pastry go soggy, tooth-snappingly tough or just fall apart. That’s why you need technique. You need the knowledge to defeat this foe.
So here is everything that you need to know to make good shortcrust and rough puff pastry.
RULE #1 Why the flour matters
The choice of your ingredients is vital for the type of pastry you want to make.
For your basic sweet or savoury pastry, when you want a tender crust and a crumbly finish, you need to inhibit the development of gluten. So many problems we have with pastry are because we’ve worked it too much or not taken steps to minimise the development of gluten.
Gluten is created when two flour proteins called glutelin and gliadin bond with the help of water and form long chains and sheets through pressure, manipulation and stretching of the dough.
That’s why softer flour with lesser protein will increase your chances of making a shortcrust pastry that is crumbly rather than tough. Ordinary plain flour is fine. If you are making puff pastry, however, you want the gluten to develop into sheets – these will be your flaky layers – so adding a little strong bread flour with lots of protein to your plain flour can be a good idea.
With puff pastry, those layers are separated by butter, which helps the super-thin layers lift and separate into a many-layered jamboree of flakiness.
RULE #2 Why temperature matters
Water mixed with flour helps swell the flour granules so they can next form gluten.
Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That’s why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn’t melt into the flour when you are working it in.
With puff, cold butter provides the vital barrier and air pockets between the pastry that translates in eating terms into delicious flakiness.
Cold hands and a cold kitchen also help, which is why Grandma’s pastry was often better because she didn’t have heating in the kitchen and she had a warm heart.
RULE #3 Why the fat matters
In shortcrust pastry, fat is added not just to provide flavour but also to stop gluten development. Basically, the fat “coats” the flour and stops these proteins forming bonds to create gluten. That’s why we always “rub in” our butter to the flour before adding any liquids.
You’ll note that with flaky or puff pastry, the butter isn’t worked into the flour but left in chunks. This is when very cold butter melts in the oven, leaving air pockets between the thin pastry layers after they have firmed, resulting in loads of crisp, flaky layers. The evaporating of water in the butter will create steam, which helps the “puffing”.
RULE #4 Why the sugar and acid matters
Sure, I get that sugar adds sweetness to my sweet shortcrust pastry. I could never understand why my sweet pastry was usually better, basically more tender, than my savoury shortcrust. Then one of my favourite food writers, Russ Parsons, explained why. Adding sugar to the flour before the water helps protect the flour from the water that you’ll add to bring it together, reducing gluten formation.
RULE #5 Add your water gradually
Minimising water to minimise gluten development is important but we still need enough water so the dough can be worked.
Add the water in any recipe a little at a time until the dough looks lumpy but no longer crumbly. If you add too much and the pastry is sticky, add a little more flour, cutting up the pastry and tossing the pieces in flour and then pushing back together. The extra kneading from incorporating a big glob of flour risks activating more gluten, resulting in tough pastry.
RULE #6 Careful working the dough
Shortcrust pastry is like your girlfriend – it needs to be treated gently and with respect if you want it to be tender.
The other thing that helps the gluten develop is pressure. This is why recipes always ask you to just pull together the dough and to work it minimally if you want a short or crumbly result. So remember when rolling out pastry, roll away from you, don’t put downward pressure on the dough as you roll, and don’t over-roll.
With puff pastry, it is different. It is all about the rolling because you want sheets of gluten to develop. Or more accurately, it is about the rolling and folding because you want thin layers of strong pastry separated by butter.
Every time you roll and fold your puff pastry dough, you multiply the layers of butter and pastry by three. So after five turns, you’ll have a spectacular 244 layer of pastry. Rotate, roll and fold again and you’ll have more than 700 layers. Epic.
RULE #7 Rest the pastry
Putting the dough back in the fridge to rest for any time longer than 15 minutes – but ideally at least 30 minutes – allows the gluten to relax and allows the pastry to chill.
Cool and relaxed pastry is far more likely to hold its shape when cooking. Relaxed gluten won’t shrink nearly as badly, so that’s why you rest pastry cases before blind baking.
If, when you get the pastry out of the fridge after resting and it seems too stiff to roll, don’t let it warm up. Instead, give it a couple of whacks with the rolling pin. This will shock it into rollable submission – and no, here for once, I don’t know why but it always worked for my grandmother. Don’t forget to move the pastry from the rolling spot to the baking tray, with flan case or pie tin draped on your rolling pin. It’s much gentler this way.
RULE #8 Why blind-bake
Soggy bottoms are a common problem for tarts, especially those with looser custards fillings such as a quiche or a lemon tart.
Properly cooking the tart crust before filling it allows it to repel moisture and stay firm. This is called blind baking.
To blind-bake your tart shell, lay baking paper or foil over the tart case and fill the middle with rice, baking weights or even a new metal dog chain.
Bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 180C.
Remove the weights and the paper/foil and return it to the oven to go a little golden.
- Follow Matt Preston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mattscravat
Information in this article is correct as of 10 September 2013.
Matt Preston writes for the taste section, available every Tuesday in The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun, every Wednesday in The Advertiser and in Perth’s Sunday Times.
