Friday, March 20, 2009

Quick Flaky Pastry

I don't make pastry very often. In fact I have a phobia when it comes to pastry. So when I saw the recipe I thought to myself, this looks do-able ... I should try it. Truth be told, if it was not for the tempting photo in the cookbook I would not have given the recipe a second glance.
The dough was a breeze to roll thin and did not break or shrink. Flaky pastry is a quick and easy alternative to puff pastry. The pie crust turned out light and flaky. We loved it.

A real confidence booster especially for a non pastry person like me. No sweat to make and is much cheaper than buying readymade pastry from the shop. Do note that this dough uses milk instead of water for binding.

Bacon & Egg Pie

Makes 1 thinly rolled double crust 20-23cm pie

Ingredients
185gm flour
1 tsp baking powder
125gm very cold butter, cubed or grated

85ml - 100ml milk
1 tsp vinegar (add to milk)


Method
1. Sieve flour and baking powder together. Add flour and butter to food processor. (For picture guide see here)

2. Pulse a few times until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

3. Drizzle milk over the mixture. Pulse until it starts to clump together and is just moist enough to form a fairly stiff dough. This should only take a few seconds.

4. Transfer the mixture to a plastic wrap. Gather the wrap round the dough and flatten the dough to form a square. Do not knead the dough.

5. Leave dough in fridge for 30 minutes or overnight.

6. Divide the dough in two, then roll out thinly. Use as required.

Quick Flaky Pastry
Note
1. Do not substitute butter with margarine.
2. The quantity of milk required is an estimate only. You may need more or less.

Tip
1. Make sure the butter is very very cold.
2. The flaky pastry dough can be premade and frozen.

Recipe : Kiwi Favourites, New Zealand's most popular recipes by Simon & Alison Holst (adapted)

5 Comments:

Not Another Omnivore said...

Pastry scares me as well...

NAOmni

Anonymous said...

i'm a bacon & egg pie addict! i'm drooling just by looking at the pics!

I don't have a food processor at home. can I use cake mixer instead? tq

Sinner said...

NAOmni - Only one way to get over the fear. Make more pies. Not too good on the waistline though. ;)

Jenn - Not advisable to use a cake mixer. You will end up with tough pastry. The other alternative would be to do it by hand but can't advise you on that since me and pastry by hand don't work very well together :(

Unknown said...

I love making pies I am a fanatic, and this pastry is a lot easier to make than flaky puff pastry and less handling :) tastes good aswell

Sinner said...

Bianca,

Isn't this pastry just great. I even used it to make beef wellington in place of puff pastry and find it so much easier to handle and wrap.

Thanks for your feedback.

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