h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please does anyone have a good pastry recipe? As I love to cook and want to make apple pie. I love apple pie and banoffee pie, so I would appreciate any suggestions. Thankyou.

The classic (shortcrust) pastry recipe, if I recall correctly is simply "half fat to flour". That is, take an amount of plain flour (not bread flour) and use half the weight of fat. Typically this fat is made up of half butter & half lard, so you might use 4oz butter, 4oz lard and 1lb flour. Make sure the flour is sifted and the fat is cold (from the fridge). Cut the fat into small pieces and rub it into the flour using the tips of your fingers (some prefer to use a pair of table knives & a sort of cross-cutting action). When all the fat has been absorbed & the mix looks like breadcrumbs, sprinkle on just enough cold water so that it will all press together. Put it in a plastic bag in the fridge & come back an hour later (this step is optional & if you have kept everything cool you may not need it).

Remove from fridge & roll on a cool, lightly floured surface (classically a marble board but a plastic-coated worktop works pretty well). Unlike bread, pastry deteriorates the more you work it, so your first rolling from the batch will be the best. Use re-rolled trimmings & things for decorations or less important parts if possible.

Hope I haven't missed anything & this method works a little better.

Ugi

That was just as my mother would do it Ugi The one thing I remember was keeping it cold - washing hands a couple of times to cool them down during the rubbing in part.

That's my memory of the old style of pastry making, too - you have to have cold hands to make good pastry!

Azara

Use iced water to mix & for a sweet pie, you could add some sugar.

Our teacher used to make us run our pulse points of the back of our wrists with cold water for very cold hands.

(Nothing to do with pastry he was just a sadist)

Don't work it to hard was another thing he used to say. I hope he meant pastry.

Hxx

Cheat - buy the ready made stuff in rolls from the supermarket. Some people have naturally light hands and some know that life is too short. You could specialize in something else. I have made a mean Victoria sponge in my time

Ready roll is always useful in the freezer, my spec is chocolate fudge cake. mmmm

I find I can make short crust pastry in less time than it takes the frozen stuff to defrost. My granny, who was an ace pastry maker, used to say keep everything cold, don't overhandle and don't rush. She used to take a day to make flaky pastry, adding fat and rolling it out each time she went into the pantry, which had a marble slab just for pastry making.

Making bread is an awful lot easier, and impresses people no end!

Agreed - I've never made pastry, but using Delia Smith's recipe to make bread is both simple and impressive. Pastry's something that's on my list to try