Flaky Pastry | Baking Processes | BAKERpedia (2024)

FAQs

What makes pastry flaky? ›

Flaky pastry, like the one pictured here, is made by incorporating small chunks of solid butter or fat through flour (either but 'rubbing in' using your fingertips or 'cutting through' using the cutting blade of a food processor) then binding the dough with moisture from other ingredients such as water and/or eggs.

By lightly handling the dough and keeping the butter in cold, small chunks, it disperses throughout the dough and creates flaky pockets once baked. Smearing the butter into flour creates these supremely flaky layers.

While flaky pastry is somewhat easier to process, it produces a lower volume after baking. Therefore, it is not a good substitute for traditional puff pastry applications such as vol-au-vents or bouchees but is more suited for pie crusts and turnovers.

Flakiness: This term is used for flaky and puff pastry which use the fat to help separate layers of gluten and starch formed in the dough. This is called lamination. The fat melts during cooking, leaving minute layers. The liquid present produces steam which evaporates and causes the layers to rise.

Vegetable Shortening

As shortening is able to withstand higher temperatures and does not melt easily, it creates flaky and crisp yet tender pie crusts when used alone or in combination with butter.

There are five main types of pastry dough for creating pastries: flaky, shortcrust, puff, choux and filo. All of them are made primarily from flour, water and fat. However, these five types of pastry dough each have slightly different core ingredients, different ratios of ingredients and, ultimately, different uses.

Flaky pastry, also known as quick pastry, blitz pastry or rough puff, is a light and thin unleavened pastry that is similar to, but distinct from, puff pastry.

While butter, shortening, or lard make equally light and tender crusts, an all-butter crust will be flakier due to butter's higher water content: as the crust bakes the butter melts and its water turns to steam, creating thin, crisp layers (flakes).

Whether or not a pastry or a pie shell becomes flaky and tender depends on the kind of fat used, and the temperature at which it is incorporated into the flour. In this cooking and food science fair project, you will determine which type and temperature of fat produces the flakiest and most-tender pastry shell.

The steam (water vapour) causes the pastry to rise. Once the steam has evaporated, the pastry is set in place from the heat during the baking process. The same process can be applied when you make batters, as well as choux pastry (for profiteroles etc.).

Can I use puff pastry instead of flaky pastry? ›

I've captured all 3 recipes here but quite often you'll only see reference to 2. 'Flaky Pastry' and 'Puff Pastry' are used interchangeable, and given the amount of effort and similarity in method I can see why but they are different. First we'll look at the recipes. I've drawn some conclusions at the bottom…

You've added too much water to the flour but not enough fat. It is important to keep the pastry cool during rolling and the oven needs to be hot.

oven at 160°C for 10mins or simply toss it in airfryer. at 160°C for 5-6mins. Let it cool for a bit before enjoying it.

Flakiness is achieved when there are discernable lumps of cold fat remaining in the final dough. In a hot oven, the dough sets quickly around these cold bits of fat. The bits of fat then melt, leaving holes and creating flaky layers.

Problem: Your Pastry is Hard and Tough

You've added too much water to the flour but not enough fat. It is important to keep the pastry cool during rolling and the oven needs to be hot.

If it's too crumbly, add a little more water. Once your pastry has come together, don't then ruin it when rolling it out. It's always tempting to shovel loads of flour onto a work surface when rolling out pastry.

While butter, shortening, or lard make equally light and tender crusts, an all-butter crust will be flakier due to butter's higher water content: as the crust bakes the butter melts and its water turns to steam, creating thin, crisp layers (flakes).