Pastry disaster....

jenagain

I'm just trying to makes some minced beef, onion, carrot and potato pasties for OH's lunches but have had a bit of a disaster when it came to making the pastry.

I used the food processor to rub in the butter and flour, then transferred it to a mixing bowl and stirred in water bit by bit. It was perfectly fine - except it had hard lumps of flour in it, like gravel!! I've only had the flour a couple of weeks so don't know why it is like that

Can I use bread flour instead of plain? Or am I going to have to go out and get some more? I am so clueless when it comes to baking

floyd

Sounds very odd, I haven't seen that before. I know you can use strong flour for puff pastry but I'm not entirely sure it would work for shortcrust. I would buy more but then I'm not very experimental when it comes to baking

Seakay

Bread flour should be fine - sieve it just in case it has lumps as well.
Is it possible that your storage area is slightly damp? If not then it is possible that the flour has been stored somewhere damp in the past and then dried out. If you still have your receipt then I suggest that it would be worth taking it with you when youu next go to the same shop, and pointing out the gravelly lumps in the flour.
I assume that there is no chance if rescuing your current pastry by rubbing out the lumps by hand? If not, then waste not want not; if you have children then let them play with it, make models etc and bake them at the same time as the pie. They can be painted when cool - will not last as long as salt dough but fine for a week or so. If no children, then it would be fine as bird food.