The Pastry School : Sweet and Savoury Pies, Tarts and Treats to Bake at Home
Julie JonesBelieve me when I say that I have willingly encountered every problem possible during testing, so that you don’t have to. I have seen the buttery layers between puff pastry rupture and choux buns deflate, crack and wither before my eyes. My inverted puff pastry has misbehaved in all ways imaginable and I have had more tears in my sheet pastry than a colander has holes. Yet with contemplation, investigation, patience and perseverance, I believe that I have pinpointed and eliminated the possible cause of each. Patience; try to skip a step or save a few minutes here and there, rush any stage of making – right through to baking – and the pastry will undoubtedly suffer for it and ultimately time will be wasted.
Over the next few pages there are recipes for many different pastries – 10 in total. From shortcrust to sheet, vegan to viennoiserie; and dare I be boastful in declaring that I have included a tasty, crunchy, easy-to-roll, gluten-free recipe, too? The recipe chapters that follow give plenty of inspiration for how to use each of these pastries, both savoury and sweet – some are traditional, some inventive, all delicious. Within each recipe and here you will find a key, a recommendation of the other pastries that could be used as an alternative to the one featured, proving pastry to be a most versatile component.
My hope is that this book will bring confidence and success to your baking and that you will embrace pastry-making with vigour, and, when a recipe calls for it, be inclined to make your own every time, so that using shop-bought pastry becomes a thing of the past.
Hone your skills and pass them down, keep the revival going, and never forget to share the undoubted knowledge that...
‘Patience with pastry is key!’