Stop pie faults before they start! Evaluate past errors, learn and progress! Seek guidance here for perfect pastry!
Shortcrust
- Hard and/ or tough pastry
Due to too much liquid, too little fat, over-handling or insufficient rubbing in.
- Soft and crumbly pastry
Too little water; too much fat or self-raising flour used instead or plain
- Shrunk pastry
Excess stretching during rolling out
- Soggy pastry
Filling too moist or sugar in a sweet pie in contact with pastry. For a double crust pie, use ideally a metal pie plate and either brush pastry base with egg white or butter the pie plate before lining with pastry.
- Sunken Pie
Oven temperature too low; cold pastry put over hot filling; too much liquid in filling or too little filling.
- Speckled pastry
Undissolved sugar grains in enriched pastry crust
Hot water crust
- Cracked pastry
Insufficient liquid; too little kneading; liquid not boiling when added to flour.
- Dry, difficult -to -mould pastry
liquid not boiling when added to flour, too much liquid, dough not cooked enough to set required shape.
- Hard pastry
Insufficient fat or liquid
Suet Pastry
- Heavy pastry
Insufficient baking powder. Water not kept on the boil during cooking.
- Tough pastry
Dough handled too much and rolled out excessively
- Soggy pastry
Paper and cloth covering over filled pie too loose, and water not kept boiling during cooking.
Choux Pastry
- Mixture too soft
Insufficient cooling of the flour before adding the eggs; eggs added too quickly
- Pastry did not rise
Self-raising flour used; oven too cold; too short baking time.
- Sinking after removal from oven
Insufficient baking; further period of baking sometimes remedies this defect
Flaky, Rough Puff and Puff pastries
- Too few layers
Insufficient resting and chilling; heavy rolling causing fat to break through and intermingle with the pastry; fat too soft.
- Fat running out during baking
Oven too cool
- Shrinking pastry
Insufficient resting; overstretching during rolling out.
(From The Reader’s Digest Cookery Year, Basic Cooking Methods, Pastry Making by Margaret Coombes and Suzanne Wakelin of Good Housekeeping Institute, 1976.)
Pastries we have attempted: choux, cream crust, enriched shortcrust, pastelillos, paté brisée, tart paste, traditional shortcrust (with lard), rice paste.
Click here for a short history of pastry.
Great advice. Also, re choux paste – I was instructed not to open the oven door for the first 20 minutes of baking (heat out/cold in). Disturbance can lead to collapse. And size matters – of the eggs that is; large ones may yield more than the flour-fat panada can hold. Leftover beaten egg can glaze the buns/gougere etc – light touch needed.
Sorry – panada should read liquid/fat/flour.
This is both useful and oddly terrifying. I had no idea so many things could go wrong with pastry…
Ha! I’m actually not an adherent to the maxim ‘Cooking is an art, baking is a science’, as one thing which blogging strictly from recipes teaches you is that there are workable variations, even for things like choux, which one might think required a high level of accuracy. Still, for anyone aiming for a very specific result with their pastry, I hope the above is useful.
Love these. Now I know what to call what I do wrong
this is good.when u have assignment for pastries this site can help u.i love this site veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy much…………………..xoxo from shatta donay
I AM DO IN AN ASSIGNMENT AND THIS WAS VERY HELP FULL ….1 QUESTION THOUGH,WHY DOES PUFF BE SOGGY IN THE CENTER EVEN THOUGH WELL BAKED?WHAT CAN I DO TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING ….
Sounds like your oven is too hot – cooking the outside thoroughly, before the inside is fully cooked and risen.
I once read that some chefs put puff pastry on to a slightly wet baking tray, though I don’t remember trying it. Theoretically puff, flaky and (unsweetened) short pastries contain so much fat that there’s no need to grease the baking tray.