A term with two main meanings:
(1) is dealt with here, (2) under pastries.
In this entry there are three interlocking and overlapping sections. The first gives a classification of the main types of pastry now in use. The second explains in a summary way the physics and chemistry of pastry-making. The third recapitulates briefly what is known about the history of the development of certain kinds of pastry.
The classification of these, if it is to be helpful, must embody the terms actually in use. If these terms corresponded to a logical categorization, whether by ingredients, technique of preparation, or purpose, that would be convenient; all the more so if the same categorization prevailed in different countries and languages. However, this is not the situation. The terms in use reflect various methods of categorization, and vary from place to place, including differences between British and American usage.
The first step is to distinguish five broad categories:
Shortcrust pastry (sometimes known as medium flake pastry in the USA) is made from flour; fat, usually lard or butter; water; and salt. The process is quick. The chilled butter or lard is cut into cubes and rubbed into the flour (already sifted and salted) to produce a mixture looking like coarse breadcrumbs. A well is made in this and iced water added little by little and stirred in until the dough coheres and can be formed into a ball. This is wrapped in foil or greaseproof paper and chilled for a short time before being rolled out and used.
Suet crust is the same, but made with suet as the fat. It has a very light texture.
Hot water crust (sometimes called short flake in the USA) has the same ingredients, but the water added is boiling. This causes the fat to melt. The result is a pastry which is strong in both the raw and cooked state, and therefore suitable for use in raised pies (see pie).
Rich shortcrust involves a change in the ingredients. There is more fat in relation to the flour. Egg may be added, and sometimes sugar. The result is relatively soft, crumbly, and tender—and sweet, if sugar has been added. The French pâte brisée (meaning broken-textured pastry) is of this type. It is the classic pastry for flans and often has a little sugar, even when used for savoury dishes, but rarely egg. Pâte sucrée (sweet pastry) does include egg, and a larger dose of sugar; and it may also be called pâte sèche (dry pastry). The Austrian mürbe Teig (tender pastry) is a rich shortcrust with egg and sour cream or cream cheese; the latter ingredient gives it a special flavour. The same applies to the rich shortcrust used for Linzertorte (see Torte and Kuchen) which includes ground almond as an ingredient. A further variation is found in the rich shortcrust used for the Russian coulibiac, which differs in being made with yeast, which makes it light and puffy. Indeed, it could be held that it really belongs in the next group.
Rough puff, flaky. Here we have a difference of technique rather than of ingredients. If rich shortcrust pastry is folded and rolled three or four times it becomes what is known as rough puff pastry. The layers of this partly separate and rise during cooking, although not nearly as much as in puff pastry proper. Rough puff is used for quickly made pie crusts. So is flaky pastry (sometimes known as long flake in the USA). It is made from flour with a high proportion of butter, and a little water. A quarter of the butter is added to the flour in the initial stage, resulting in a normal shortcrust pastry. Then the pastry is rolled, dotted with a further quarter of the butter, folded, re-rolled and allowed to rest in a cool place. The procedure is repeated twice more until all the butter is used. This pastry is finely layered with irregular inclusions of butter, giving a light but short texture midway between that of rich shortcrust and puff pastry. French demi feuilleté (half-puff) pastry is similar, but the butter left from the original mixing is added in a flat sheet at the first stage, so that the three turns and rolls spread it out more evenly between the layers. Its texture is closer to that of true puff pastry.
For genuine puff pastry, only about one-eighth of the butter is incorporated in the original mixture. The pastry is rolled out. Then the rest of the butter is spread over two-thirds of the area of the sheet of pastry, which is then folded into three in such a way that there are three layers of pastry enclosing two of butter. Folding and rolling is carried out six times in all, with rests between turns. The resulting pastry has 729 layers each separated by a thin smear of butter. Older methods called for folding in two and for nine turns, giving 512 layers. Either way, the pastry rises to a very light, laminated texture, crisp and frail. Puff pastry is used in delicate sweet and savoury articles of many kinds.
Yeast puff pastry is a richer kind, originally a speciality of Vienna and now used to make croissants and similar articles. The dough is made with yeast, milk, and eggs as well as flour and a mixture of butter and lard. Depending on the particular recipe, the dough is given up to four rolls and turns. The combined effect of the rolling and turning and the rise produced by the yeast is to give a pastry as light as normal puff pastry, but with a softer, richer texture and a more interesting flavour.
Choux pastry is made by melting butter in hot water, adding flour, and cooking the mixture until it is smooth and no longer sticky. Then eggs are beaten in one by one. The raw pastry is very soft, and is usually piped through a forcing bag. When cooked, it rises greatly and has a delicate, spongy texture which finds application in éclairs and similar light delicacies. Barbara Maher (1982), remarking on its versatility, asked: who could guess that this pastry is the basis of products as apparently dissimilar as: cream puffs, Herzogbrot (Bread of the Dukes), Carolines, Salammbos, Mecca rolls, Paris Brest and St Honoré (for both of which see gateau), Lucca eyes, and Religieuses (see éclair)?
Filo pastry is treated separately.
The striking differences in texture between various kinds of pastry have simple causes which lie in the nature of wheat flour and certain kinds of fat. Wheat flour, when kneaded into a plain dough made with water, develops strands of gluten, which are what give an elastic, tough quality to bread. In ordinary pastry, such a texture is undesirable; so a fat or oil is added. This retards the development of the gluten, mainly by physically interposing itself between the grains of flour so that the strands cannot tangle and be drawn out. A hard, solid fat such as lard or suet is most effective here. Lard in particular has a coarse, crystalline structure which makes a highly effective barrier. Butter is less effective, and shortcrust pastry made with butter alone has an inferior texture. If the fat is melted with hot water, or if liquid oil is used, the thin oily layer between the grains offers less obstacle to gluten formation and the resulting pastry is tougher. This is the effect deliberately sought in hot water pastry.
The fact that pastry made with solid fat is stiffer, both when raw and in the early stages of baking, is due simply to the solidity of the fat, and is unconnected with the previous phenomenon.
In puff pastry a certain amount of gluten formation is desirable, but all the strands of gluten must lie in one plane to give strength to the horizontal sheets. Thus the process is one of repeatedly stretching a mixture with only a little fat in it, but whose layers are separated by a barrier of butter. A good deal of air also gets in between the layers and it is partly the expansion of this, and partly the steam formed in cooking, which force the layers apart and make puff pastry rise in such a striking way.
In choux pastry, another notable riser, the preliminary cooking of a flour and fat mixture creates a smooth paste into which air can be beaten during the later stage of adding the eggs, which are themselves even better vehicles for air bubbles. The eggs are added after the cooking stage, simply to avoid hardening them prematurely.
In filo pastry, the gluten is developed to its full extent. The dough used is a mixture of flour and water only, which is thoroughly kneaded and then stretched so that the gluten strands are all horizontal. In this way it resembles a single leaf of puff pastry. When several layers of filo are wrapped around a filling they are brushed with melted butter to separate them, so that the resemblance to puff pastry is increased.
In strudel pastry, the reduction of gluten formation resulting from adding fat and egg to the dough is compensated for by the use of strong, high-gluten bread flour, and by adding a little vinegar to the mixture, which chemically assists the gluten to form.
In flaky, puff, filo, and strudel doughs, where gluten is formed, the process is assisted by giving the dough one or more ‘rests’ in a cool place. Ideally two hours in a refrigerator is required for each rest. During this time the gluten strands, which have been greatly stressed by the rolling or whichever process is used, draw themselves out a little more as the result of this tension, and thus become not only longer but also slacker. Once the gluten has ‘relaxed’ in this way, it is easier to stretch it further next time.
Small, sweet cakes eaten by the ancient Egyptians may well have included types using pastry. With their fine flour, oil, and honey they had the materials, and with their professional bakers they had the skills.
In the plays of Aristophanes (5th century bc) there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. Nothing is known of the actual pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker.
The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to cover meats and fowls which were baked, thus keeping in the juices. (The covering was not meant to be eaten; it filled the role of what was later called ‘huff paste’—see below.) A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the minor items served at banquets.
However, the Romans were not strong on pastry. Like the Greeks, they cooked with oil. Pastry made with oil is palatable enough, but lacks stiffness in the raw state, and tends to slump during the early stages of baking. Pastry goods made with oil have to be small or flat, or closely wrapped around their contents. These forms are still noticeable in Middle Eastern dishes using oil pastry.
In medieval N. Europe the usual cooking fats were lard and butter, which—especially lard—were conducive to making stiff pastry and permitted development of the solid, upright case of the raised pie. This was made from coarse flour, usually rye.
No medieval cookery books give detailed instructions on how to make pastry; they assume the necessary knowledge (although some give incomplete accounts of ingredients). From later works (notably Gervase Markham's The English Hus-wife of 1615) it can be inferred that a stiff pie case or ‘coffyn’ (see coffin) for a tart was composed of coarse flour and a little suet amalgamated with boiling water, as hot water crust is made today. Raised pie cases were baked with their contents. The ‘coffyns’ for large open tarts were baked blind, that is, empty. The rough, grey pastry could be made to look quite pleasing by glazing the outside with egg yolk. But it was not intended to be eaten, except by servants after the meal. A similar coarse, stiff pastry was used to cover fowls and pieces of meat that were baked. A protective case of this kind was known as ‘huff paste’. It not only sealed in the juice and flavour of the meat during cooking, but also acted as a barrier against contamination if the meat was not to be eaten at once. It was therefore left on until the last moment. Although it was not intended to be eaten, the pastry became well flavoured with meat juice and, outside the formal surroundings of a banquet, people would often gnaw the tough but tasty fragments.
However, not all medieval pastry was coarse. Small tarts would be made with a rich pastry of fine white flour, butter, sugar, saffron, and other good things, certainly meant to be eaten.
From the middle of the 16th century on, actual recipes for pastry begin to appear. The coarse rye pastry for raised pies, already described, remained as it was. For raised pies which did not have to be quite so durable, but might have to last a few days, there was a thick hot water crust of fine wheat flour and some butter. Sometimes meat broth was used instead of water. This pastry would be hard but fully edible. Fine pastry was made with the best wheat flour, which might be dry baked before use to give a short texture. It was mixed with plenty of butter, eggs, and cold water: in fact, it was a true rich shortcrust pastry such as is still made. Sugar, saffron, and the like would be added for sweet pasties.
Karen Hess (1981), who provides several important notes on the early history of pastry, points out that there is a difficulty in identifying the earliest references to puff pastry, since the Italian and French terms for this (pasta sfoglia and pâte feuilletée) also carry the more general meaning of ‘leafed pastry’, which has been known in the Mediterranean region since antiquity. She remarks that the first recipe for something recognizable as puff pastry is in Dawson (1596, but she cites an edition of 1586). An Italian–English dictionary of 1598, by Florio, seems to have been the first to use the English term ‘puff pastry’.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Dawson, Thomas (1596), The Good Housewife's Jewel, repr Lewes: Southover Press (1996).
Hess, Karen (ed) (1981), Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, New York: Columbia UP.
Maher, Barbara (1982), Cakes, London: Jill Norman & Hobhouse.
