Want Perfect Pastry Dough? Cooking Teacher Shares Her Secrets (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making good 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.

The trick is to work large pieces of cold butter into dry ingredients and hydrate it all with ice cold water (as if you were making pie crust). Sometimes bakers grate butter into the mix or use a food processor. There's lots of ways to make rough puff pastry.

The first golden rule of making pastry; keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible.

General rules

Measure the ingredients carefully. Use good quality flour. Mix together the flour and salt by sieving. Keep everything as cool as possible otherwise the fat may melt which would spoil the finished dish.

Creating a smooth, pliable dough

Excess water makes a batter, while too little water renders a dough rough, dry and unpliable. Generally speaking, a flour to water ratio of 2:1 achieves a dough of reasonable consistency. So if you have 500g of flour, use about 250 mL of water.

The number one tip most pie dough recipes will emphasize is using cold butter, cold water, cold hands—really cold everything. The colder the butter (or shortening) stays in the dough, the more it can stay self-contained until it hits the oven, creating bigger pockets of air.

Egg wash is the most reliable but it can be very thick and sticky. Milk wash will go on more evenly but it can soak into pastry and make it weaker. Melted butter works nicely after the crust has set but it can make the crust greasy and weaker.

You can brush an egg-wash glaze (1 egg plus 1 tsp. water) over the Puff Pastry to create a rich, golden sheen when baked. Use an egg wash to help seal filled pastries and connect Puff Pastry pieces: mix 1 egg plus 1 tsp. water, brush between layers, then pinch or press together.

Why do you put vinegar in puff pastry? ›

But there are two much more important perks to using vinegar: it provides a little insurance against overworking the dough. And, that splash of vinegar will keep your dough from oxidizing and turning gray.

Mixing the dough to the right consistency. The important thing to remember is that different flour will absorb water differently. I always start with measuring in less water than I know I will need, then I take the scales away and splash more water in gradually until I am happy that the dough feels right.

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.

Hands off. It is important to handle the pastry as little as possible when mixing and rolling. Overworking it will 'develop' the gluten in the flour, which can make the pastry hard to roll. Overworked pastry is also more likely shrink during cooking and to be tough in texture once cooked.

A good pastry is light and airy and fatty, but firm enough to support the weight of the filling. When making a shortcrust pastry, care must be taken to blend the fat and flour thoroughly before adding any liquid---to ensure that the flour granules are adequately coated with fat and less likely to develop gluten.