Pastry

Pastry the name given to various kinds of dough made from flour, butter and eggs, that are rolled out thinly and used as the base for baked goods. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, and quiches.

A good pastry is very light and airy, but firm enough to support the weight of the filling. The shortening is distributed between the flour-and-water in many thin layers or sheets; when baked, the resulting pastry is delicate and flaky. Good pastry must be uniformly mixed to achieve this layering, and should not have any large bubbles of air in it, as these will expand during cooking and spoil the texture. However, overworking of the pastry will cause long gluten chains to form, resulting in a tough product. Thus the manufacture of good pastry is something of a fine art.

As pastry must be baked to be edible, and pie fillings often do not need extra baking, many pie recipes involve blind-baking the pastry before the filling is added.

Some types of pastry are:

• Shortcrust pastry
• Suet pastry
• Puff pastry
• Danish pastry
• Filo pastry

Small cakes, tarts and other sweet dishes involving pastry are often called 'pastries' after their primary ingredient, and bakers and chefs who specialise in producing them are called Pastrychefs.