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Neill's Perfect Pastry
There are no hidden secrets to making successful shortcrust pastry, simply follow these guidelines:
- Weigh the ingredients carefully
- Keep everything as cool as possible
- Handle the pastry as little as possible
- Make sure the oven temperature is correct
Basic Shortcrust Pastry Recipe
175g ( 6oz) Neill's Golden Fleece
75g (3oz ) Chilled butter
Chilled water
- For sweet shortcust pastry add 25g ( 1oz ) caster sugar and 1 egg yolk
- For extra fibre Neill's wholemeal flour may be used instead of plain flour
How to make perfect shortcust pastry
Sift the Neill's flour into a baking bowl
Add the chilled butter and cut with a knife
Rub in until it resembles breadcrumbs
Add sufficient cold water to make a stiff dough ( A food processor can be used to speed up this process )
Chill before rolling out
| What could go wrong? | What could cause it? |
|---|---|
| Pastry shrinks during cooking | Stretched too much during rolling. Needed more time to rest before use. Too much water added |
| Pastry hard and tough | Too much water added Handled too much during rolling out ( Try to get it right first time. .Re-rolling pastry toughens it) Not enough fat added |
| Too crumbly and hard to handle | Not enough liquid added to bind the pastry together. Too much fat was added Mixed for too long |
When making sweet shortcrust pastry always add caster sugar. Granulated sugar or too hot an oven can result in a brown speckeld effect.
Puff Pastry and flaky pastry
Puff pastry and flaky pastry are both light, crisp and flaky. They tend to be a little more time consuming to prepare than shortcrust pastry. The basic puff pastry recipe is simple to prepare, requires minimum time and skill and is suitable for most savoury and sweet dishes.
Basic Puff Pastrty
250g ( 8oz ) Neill's Golden Fleece
175g (6oz) Chilled butter
chilled water to mix
How to make puff pastry
- Sift the Neill's Golden Fleece into a baking bowl
- Cut the butter into small pieces about the size of a hazelnut and add to the flour
- Add cold water and mix to an elastic dough, turn onto a lightly floured board and knead lightly
- Roll into a strip approx. 30cm x 10cm, moisten the edges and fold in three
- Give the pastry a half turn and roll out to 30cm x 10cm again
- Repeat this process three or four times until the fat has been evenly distributed throughout the pastry and lots of air has been trapped between the layers. Chill between each rolling process.
- Use as required for sweet or savoury dishes.
| What could go wrong? | What could cause it? |
|---|---|
| The pastry is tough and brittle | Too much flour used when rolling and folding the pastry. Too much liquid added. The oven was not hot enough. Handled too much during rolling |
| The pastry is not flaky enough | Not enough chilling and resting time between folding and rolling. The fat was too warm and melted into the flour instead of remaining in layers. The oven was not hot enough. |
| Pastry shrinks during baking | The pastry was stretched during rolling. Not long enough between chilling and resting between folding and rolling The oven was not hot enough |