On Food and Cooking

sweet breads whose structure is divided by layers of fat. Croissants and Danish pastries are really bread-pastry ...

Pastry making flowered in the Mediterranean region in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, when puf ...

flakes. Laminated pastries — puff pastry, phyllo, strudel — are constructed of large, separate, very thin l ...

tender and delicate. Pastry Ingredients Flours Pastries are made from several different kinds of flour. A cr ...

Pastry structures (uncooked doughs shown at bottom; cooked pastries at top). The key to pastry structure ...

little or no flavor. This is because the fat must have the necessary consistency for producing the desired texture. ...

and 25% solids at kitchen temperature, and at the temperatures that the pastry dough reaches as it’s mixed ...

15–25% solids over a temperature range triple that of butter, from 53 to 85ºF/12–30ºC. It’s therefore muc ...

The English word pastry, Italian pasta, and French pâte and pâté all go back to a suggestive group ...

miscellaneous objects for its nest. Water in Pastry Fats An important difference between butter and either lard ...

difference between a crumbly texture and a tough one. Eggs are often used to provide rich ...

clear glass allows it to pass right through and heat the crust directly. Thin metal pans can’t hold ...

the gluten and set the structure. The filling in open pies and tarts blocks oven heat from reaching the pa ...

Crumbly but firm pastries are especially prominent in French cooking, where thin but robust crusts support q ...

together. The butter may be replaced by vegetable oils, poultry fats — chicken, duck, goose — and lard ...

dough produce a crust that is both tender and flaky. They disperse some of the fat evenly into the d ...

some of its fat rubbed into the flour to tenderize, and some rolled in for flakiness. The first ...

The dough is rested in the refrigerator to rechill the fat and let the water become more evenly distributed, and ...

According to the food historian Charles Perry, puff and sheet pastries appear to have been invented by ...

out accomplish. The dough is shaped into a square. Early Recipes for Laminated Pastry: Early English “Puff Paste” ...