I have always been apprehensive about handling pastry and even more so making it. I have only ever attempted making short crust pastry once, more than a decade ago and that experience was enough to stop me dead in my tracks.
Here I am again, taking up the challenge, all because I bought myself a pie maker. It was on special for $10 and too good an offer to pass up.
Pastries are by nature quite fattening. I played around with trying to reduce the ratio of fat to flour as even a slight reduction in the fat content will help in the cholestrol and calorie count. In this recipe I have successfully reduced the fat used by 25 percent without affecting the flaky texture of the pie.
This short crust pastry was easy to handle and did not crumble . When baked the pastry was tender, flaky and crispy right through to the inside. I usually make a batch, pre-cut the pie tops and bottoms, and freeze them thus making the task of making the next lot of pies less tedious. We have used the pastry to make curry mince and bacon n' egg pies and they were delicious.
Makes 5 - 5" pies
Ingredients260 gm flour
60 gm butter
40 gm
shortening¼ tsp salt
95-105 ml ice cold water
1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice (add to water)
Method1. Add flour, salt, butter and shortening to food processor. Cube the butter and shortening. Pulse a few times until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
2. Sprinkle the water over the flour mixture. Pulse until it starts to clump together (fig 2). Pinch a little of the mixture between your fingers, if the dough is too dry and crumbly, add a little more water and pulse for 1-2 seconds more.
It is very important not to overprocess the dough. Do not allow the pastry to form a ball in the food processor. The dough should not be wet or sticky.3. Transfer the mixture to a plastic wrap (fig 3). Gather the wrap round the dough and flatten the dough to form a square (fig 4).
Do not knead the dough.
