Blind Baking

Appears in
Alastair Little's Italian Kitchen

By Alastair Little

Published 1996

  • About
One of the most tedious techniques in cooking is the blind baking of pastry shells, involving sheets of greaseproof paper or foil and dried beans. The beans are to hold the pastry in place, preventing it collapsing down the sides of the tart tin, and in theory giving you a partially or fully baked case ready to receive a liquid filling. In fact, two things generally happen: the pastry collapses down the sides anyway, and when you attempt to remove the foil and beans, a large section of the pastry is usually attached to it!