Common Faults in Pastry Making (2024)

Stop pie faults before they start! Evaluate past errors, learn and progress! Seek guidance here for perfect pastry!

Shortcrust
– Hard and/ or tough pastry
Due to too much liquid, too little fat, over-handling or insufficient rubbing in.

– Soft and crumbly pastry
Too little water; too much fat or self-raising flour used instead or plain

– Shrunk pastry
Excess stretching during rolling out

– Soggy pastry
Filling too moist or sugar in a sweet pie in contact with pastry. For a double crust pie, use ideally a metal pie plate and either brush pastry base with egg white or butter the pie plate before lining with pastry.

– Sunken Pie
Oven temperature too low; cold pastry put over hot filling; too much liquid in filling or too little filling.

– Speckled pastry
Undissolved sugar grains in enriched pastry crust

Hot water crust
– Cracked pastry
Insufficient liquid; too little kneading; liquid not boiling when added to flour.

– Dry, difficult -to -mould pastry
liquid not boiling when added to flour, too much liquid, dough not cooked enough to set required shape.

– Hard pastry
Insufficient fat or liquid

Suet Pastry
– Heavy pastry
Insufficient baking powder. Water not kept on the boil during cooking.

– Tough pastry
Dough handled too much and rolled out excessively

– Soggy pastry
Paper and cloth covering over filled pie too loose, and water not kept boiling during cooking.

Choux Pastry
– Mixture too soft
Insufficient cooling of the flour before adding the eggs; eggs added too quickly

– Pastry did not rise
Self-raising flour used; oven too cold; too short baking time.

– Sinking after removal from oven
Insufficient baking; further period of baking sometimes remedies this defect

Flaky, Rough Puff and Puff pastries
– Too few layers
Insufficient resting and chilling; heavy rolling causing fat to break through and intermingle with the pastry; fat too soft.

– Fat running out during baking
Oven too cool

– Shrinking pastry
Insufficient resting; overstretching during rolling out.

(From The Reader’s Digest Cookery Year, Basic Cooking Methods, Pastry Making by Margaret Coombes and Suzanne Wakelin of Good Housekeeping Institute, 1976.)

Pastries we have attempted: choux, cream crust, enriched shortcrust, pastelillos, paté brisée, tart paste, traditional shortcrust (with lard), rice paste.

Click here for a short history of pastry.

FAQs

Common Faults in Pastry Making? ›

Whether you use a food processor, a stand mixer, or your hands to incorporate the ingredients together, overmixing is a common mistake that leads to a chewy crust. It's tempting when baking to combine the ingredients completely, but the texture should resemble a coarse meal before adding your liquid.

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What is one of the most common mistakes made when preparing a pastry crust? ›

What are faults in baking? ›

Insufficient aeration (from under mixing or not enough baking powder) The batter is too stiff. Flour is too strong. Batter toughened (from over mixing or from recipe imbalance) Oven too hot (which leads to the cake being 'gripped' and stunted)

What is the golden rule of pastry? ›

The first golden rule of making pastry; keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible. Sieve the flour to add extra air and lightness to the pastry.

What happens if you put too much water in pastry? ›

Richard's solution: The trouble with pastry is that you need to be accurate; too much water and you're left with shrunken, tough pastry, too little and it stays dry and crumbly. When adding the water to the butter and flour, use very cold water and add it a tablespoonful at a time.

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Why won't my pastry roll out? ›

Your dough is too crumbly.

Just sprinkle some cold water over the dough with your fingers and work it in—gently! —until the dough comes together. If your dough gets too warm, send it back into the fridge to chill out. When you take it back out, it should roll more easily.

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What not to do when making pastry? ›

If the dough is overworked, it can become tough and difficult to roll out. This can happen if the dough is kneaded too much or if too much flour is added during the rolling process. Shortcrust pastry can shrink during baking if it's not properly chilled beforehand or if it's rolled too thin.

Read On ›

What are the issues faced in pastry production? ›

The challenges of bread and pastry production include technological problems related to dough rheological properties and final product characteristics, as well as the need for sustainable innovations and improvement strategies throughout the production chains ¹.