Page 35 - Kenwood Cook Book

Pies and Pastry

Pastry in its various forms is the basis of a large number of dishes, sweet and
savoury. Your Chef will do all the hitherto unpleasant ‘rubbing-in’ quicker than
you’d ever thought possible, so remember not to overmix.

Add the water as soon as the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, otherwise
the pastry becomes too ‘short’ to roll out. Water should be added quickly and
the mixer switched off as soon as it is incorporated. Adding the water a drop
at a time, and mixing between each addition, makes the pastry like
indiarubber!

The proportion of fat can be cut down to 6 oz to 1 lb flour; the Chef rubs in so
well that excellent pastry can be made this way.

As pastry should be kept as cold as possible, the Chef again is ideal, as your
hands never touch the ingredients during mixing.

Generally pastry is cooked in a hot oven unless otherwise recommended - as
for custard tarts where the filling would be spoiled by too hot an oven. Here
are recipes for some standard types of pastry; when ‘6 oz pastry’ or ‘8 oz
pastry’ is called for in a recipe, it means pastry prepared with that amount of
flour.

Short Crust Pastry

USING ‘K’BEATER Place the fat in the bowl, cut into pieces
1 lb plain flour and switch to minimum speed. Tip in the
½ lb fat (lard or butter or a sieved flour and salt and gradually
mixture of lard and increase speed to 2 as the fat breaks up.
margarine) Mix until of breadcrumb consistency,
¼ tsp salt then immediately add the water and
cold water to mix (approx. 4-5 switch off as soon as incorporated. This
tbsp) takes a few seconds.
Switch off, turn the pastry out onto a
lightly floured board and roll out. Use as
desired for sweet or savoury dishes.

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