Mince pies/quiches

littlelady

Help me please,i want the recipe for the pastry for mince pies,i have tried the basic shortcrust and it is hardish,also when i make my pastry for quiche the bottom of the pastry is not cooked properly WHY?

Penelope_Penguin

littlelady wrote: »

Help me please,i want the recipe for the pastry for mince pies,i have tried the basic shortcrust and it is hardish,also when i make my pastry for quiche the bottom of the pastry is not cooked properly WHY?

Does this help - the best mince pie pastry ever

When I cook quiche I use a metal tin, and sit it onto a metal baking sheet. This aids heat transfer, and cooking

Penny. x

freyasmum

When you're making quiche, you can blind bake the case. This stops the mixture soaking into the pasty and making it soggy. When that's done you can put the mixture in and bake as normal

With regards to the pastry; are you overworking it? That would make it tough. You want to make sure it's just combined and pop it in the fridge for about half an hour, or longer if you have it so it's nice and chilled. Then roll it out as usual.

HTH.

Nomad25

My gran used to make wonderful 'sweet' pastry for pies, I'm not a cook, but I think adding sugar and an egg to the mix [as per PP's link] gives it that lovely soft, melt in the mouth texture.

sandy2_2

Once you put the pastry in the tin, I think you can dust the inside of the pastry case with some semolina to stop the bottom going soggy in pies/quiches

geek0

looking for a bit of advice... i attempted a quiche today and the pastry (shortcrust) seems a little bit too dry and crumbly when cooked, is this not enuff fat to pastry ratio or did i not put enough water in ? was aslo finding it hard to get the breadcrumb consistensy ther seemed to be bigger lumps that just wouldnt disappear can you tell me what im doing wrong

tpsjrm

geek0 wrote: »

looking for a bit of advice... i attempted a quiche today and the pastry (shortcrust) seems a little bit too dry and crumbly when cooked, is this not enuff fat to pastry ratio or did i not put enough water in ? was aslo finding it hard to get the breadcrumb consistensy ther seemed to be bigger lumps that just wouldnt disappear can you tell me what im doing wrong

If you can't get the breadcrumb consistency, you may have been using too much fat, or the fat was a bit too warm - use it straight from the fridge and use 'hard' margarine/butter.

If you didn't use enough water, then the ball of dough wouldn't hold together. It's always a bit of 'trial and error', as each batch of flour is slightly different with the amount of water it needs.

I've found replacing a quarter of the flour with cornflour helps to make a nice shortcrust pastry.

But keep persevering - you will get there eventually, and be so pleased with yourself!
:T

nesssie1702

For shortcrust pastry, the ratio is half fat to flour, so if you're using 8oz of flour, you'll use 4 oz of fat, or in metric if you're using 250g of flour, you would use 125g of fat. Best to use shortening rather than soft margarine as it will give a "short"er pastry.

One of the tricks with any pastry is to keep everything as cold as possible and not to overwork it.

When you're baking blind, let the pastry rest for a while in your dish before you cut off the spare bits - that way, the protein in the flour gets the chance to relax, otherwise if you cut it when the protein molecules are stretched you might find that the pastry shrinks too much in the cooking process.

You can either use tin foil in the bottom of the flan dish on top of the pastry (make sure you !!!!! the pastry with a fork first though) or use any raw beans to keep the pastry flat. The beauty of using beans is that you can reuse them time and time again, just keep them in a plastic container in between your pastry making bouts.

HTH