Pastry

Appears in

Published 1989

About

Flour is the main ingredient in both bread and pastry, but how they differ! Bread dough is kneaded until elastic to develop the gluten, but the opposite effect is sought when making pastry. Great care is taken in mixing and baking to achieve a pastry that is rich yet light, with a crumbly or flaky texture. Some doughs are folded into dozens or, in the case of puff pastry, into hundreds of layers.

Three doughs dominate the classic pastry field—plain, puff and choux. English shortcrust and American pie pastry are prime examples of plain pastry dough; French pâte brisée and its cousin pâte sucrée are similar in composition but are mixed differently to give a more pliable texture. Puff pastry, which challenges even the accomplished cook, is in fact only one of several leaved pastry doughs, which include phyllo and strudel. The “odd man out” is choux pastry, which depends on eggs for its lightness.