Pies and Tarts

PIES AND TARTS used to be among the most popular baked goods made at home. Nowadays, while a lot of people will attempt a cake or cookies, they shy away from desserts made with pastry doughs because they think these doughs are difficult to make and even more difficult to roll and form. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem lies in the fact that most people have never learned to work with pastry doughs at home, so they reach adulthood with no experience in handling them. Also, the difficulty of working with pastry doughs has been greatly exaggerated. Endless precautions about not overhandling doughs can paralyze the novice. It’s true that you need to be careful when mixing and rolling doughs, but really no more careful than you need to be with any other culinary procedure. With good, accurate instructions to help you, you’ll discover that pastry doughs needn’t intimidate.