Types of pastry

Karensteps

Right I'm on the Asda website about to do my shop! Now I made a chicken pie last week with puff pastry on the top which was fine, but im looking at ASDA and there is so many types, shortcrust, filo, puff? What does each one do? I'd like to make a pie that is contained within pastry, not just the top is covered if you get my drift. So could anyone explain what the different types are for? I wanna be creative (but not too much hence why Im buying frozen ready made )

Sola

If you want the filling completely encased, I'd go for shortcrust. This is your basic 'half fat to flour' recipe eg. 4oz lard/marg to 8oz flour.

Filo is the ultra-thin stuff in baklava so I wouldn't use this for a pie.

If I remember correctly from school cookery lessons, for flaky you roll out a basic dough, put dabs of butter onto one third, fold it, roll it again, and repeat. Puff pastry is your typical savoury slice from the supermarket type thing, while flaky is more like the cream slices you get from a bakery. The difference in making puff pastry is you use a big wodge of solid fat as opposed to the extra little dabs.

Choux pastry is for things like eclairs and is made into a paste in a saucepan.

squeaky

Here ya go... everything you ever wanted to know

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/masterchef/mc50000_index2.shtml

Don't forget to click on "next page" - there's lots of good stuff there