56 books
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13 voters
Pastry
“
Breakfast included delicate palm-size apple turnovers, something I would ordinarily pass on, given that the ones I'd had in the past had been too sweet and cloying. But I knew from experience that the food here should not be ignored.
The first bite of turnover was my undoing. The pastry was not heavy or greasy but light and flakey, golden layers that shattered at the first bite, then melted on the tongue. The filling consisted of sliced apples cooked until just tender, their tartly sweet juice a
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― Make It Sweet
― Make It Sweet
“
Like flours, not all fats are created equal. Oil is fat that is liquid at room temperature but good pastry cannot be made with oil. Flour simply absorbs the oil and the resulting dough is mealy, not tender and flaky. The ideal fat for pastry-making is one with a high melting point because the longer it takes for the fat to melt, the longer it keeps the little parcels of dough separate, generating little packets of steam to puff and lighten the dough. Pig fat (lard) has a high melting point and v
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― Pie: A Global History
― Pie: A Global History
