Pastry Recipes
types
Crust pastry
for meat pies such as pork, veal, ham and game.Flaky pastry
for eccles cakes, sweet and savoury pies, turnovers and sausage rolls.Suet pastry
for roly-polys, boiled and steamed puddings and dumplings.Crumb crust pastry
for the base of cheesecakes, chilled tarts, ice-cream tarts and chilled chiffon mixtures.Shortcrust pastry
for flans, tarts and quiches and for single and double-crust pies.recipes
information
Shortcrust pastry is the easiest type of pastry to make. It's also very versatile as it readily incorporates other flavourings. It can be used for sweet or savoury pies and tarts, pasties and other pastry parcels. Regular shortcrust pastry is bound with water but for a richer version the water is replaced with egg.
Pate sucree is a French sweet pastry similar to shortcrust pastry but with high sugar content and egg yolks for richness
Puff pastry has a much higher fat content than short pastries and uses a special rolling and folding technique to create fine layers of dough that trap air between them. The pastry then puffs up on baking, creating scrumptious leaves with a light texture and rich flavour. This is one pastry that really impresses.
Flaky pastry and 'rough puff' are both similar to puff pastry but easier and quicker to make. They are ideal for recipes where you want a flaky texture but do not need the pastry to rise impressively.
Suet-crust pastry is a traditional British pastry that, despite being made with shredded beef suet, can be used for sweet or savoury dishes such as steak and kidney pudding or jam roly-poly. Suet-crust pastry is steamed, rather than baked, to give a light spongy texture and can also be used for dumplings.
Hot water crust pastry is used almost exclusively for Britain's traditional raised pies, such as pork pies. Hot water is used to create a pliable dough that can be shaped by hand and is solid enough to hold a heavy pork filling.
Choux pastry, famously used in profiteroles and eclairs, is unusual in that it has a high egg content and is made in a saucepan with a mixture of boiling-hot water and melted butter. The raw mixture is sticky, so it is piped or spooned rather than rolled. Its high water content creates steam during cooking which forces the pastry to expand in volume, leaving it with a hollow centre and a light texture Once they are cooked, profiteroles and eclairs need to be pierced or slit to allow the steam to escape and create a pocket that you can fill with a luscious mixture.
