At long last the month of pastry and lamination has arrived! Due to some unforeseen events, April’s theme was pushed out two months to allow for time to collect the necessary supplies (e.g. flour). There are countless types and variations of pastry as plenty of regions have left their mark on the patisserie world. It is impractical to attempt to identify precisely how many kinds of basic dough there are due to the complexity of culture, variations, and renaming similar or the same ones. According to Bake Off there are 6 kinds: Sweet crust (Pate Sucree), Shortcrust, Suet, Puff, Hot water crust, Choux. A very British perspective.
I did attempt to pinpoint the most common, cross-cultural, and crucial pastry dough that every baker should strive to master. With the help of the world wide web, I was able to narrow the list of 229 pastries on Wikipedia to 7, as opposed to the 5 main ones they selected. While I do agree there are probably 5 main ones to master, being introduced further and expanding beyond the star performers will increase our understanding of those 5. I added toaster pastry and hot water crust to their list because they look fun and unique. I did debate between fig newtons for some time but perhaps we save it for a deeper dive into pastry during another month.
For June, we will explore 7 (only to limit the flour consumption and carbs) varieties of pastry, that once understood will open doors to becoming a patisserie chef. At least the goal here is to understand the different kinds of pastry and to practice using them to make some of our favorite store-bought treats and eats.
Popular Pastries:
- Toaster pastry
- designed to withstand reheating in the toaster – such as Pop Tarts
- Puff pastry
- fat (butter), flour, water – typically unleavened
- the infamous arduously time consuming laminated classic pastry
- there are sub-categories here, and we will explore the very popular croissants (leavened!) from the Viennoiserie (Vienna-Style) adapted in France in the 19th century
- Filo / Phyllo
- very thin individually layered dough separated by oil or butter and common in the Mediterranean and Middle East, called filo in England
- unleavened and not laminated by repeated folding
- Choux (“shoo”) pastry
- fat (butter), water, flour and eggs + steam
- Flaky Pastry (aka quick flaky, rough puff, blitz pastry)
- fat (butter), flour, cold water, salt
- once mastering puff pastry, this cheater’s pastry is the go-to from then on – although still time consuming, it is easier and cuts the lamination time in half
- Shortcrust pastry
- surplus fat (butter and/or lard), flour, water or egg
- pie crust
- Hot water crust pastry
- fat (shortening), flour, water, salt
- very old fashioned British dough typically used to convert game animals (brought home by hunting parties) into tall meat pies
Skip arm day and we will get started!
Food of the Month 