Food and Nutrition Topic
Pastry Making
- Read notes
- Flashcards
- Quiz
- Confident
Study focus - 3 things
- Pastry needs the right flour, fat, liquid, and handling
- Ingredient functions explain texture: tender, crisp, flaky, or tough
- Cool handling and light mixing help prevent tough pastry
Section 1Basic pastry ingredients
Basic pastry usually uses flour, fat, cold water, and salt. Flour gives structure, fat adds tenderness and flakiness, water binds the mixture, and salt adds flavour. The thing to remember is that pastry is about texture.
Section 2Rubbing-in method
For shortcrust pastry, fat is rubbed into flour until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Then cold water is added gradually to form a dough. Watch out: too much water makes pastry sticky and tough.
Section 3Handling pastry
Handle pastry lightly and keep it cool. Resting the dough can make it easier to roll and less likely to shrink. Easy to mix up - kneading is useful for bread, but too much kneading is bad for pastry.
Section 4Common pastry faults
Pastry can become tough, hard, greasy, crumbly, or shrink during baking. Causes include too much water, too much handling, warm fat, wrong oven temperature, or incorrect measuring.
Examples
A pastry dough is sticky and hard to roll. What is one likely cause?
Too much water may have been added. Water binds the dough, but too much makes it sticky and can lead to tough pastry.
You are making pastry for Jamaican patties. Why should the dough be handled lightly?
Light handling helps keep the pastry tender. Too much handling develops gluten and can make the pastry tough.
Now let's water it
Session runs notes to flashcards to quiz back-to-back.