This is the only flaky pastry recipe you’ll ever need. Sitting in the sweet spot between easy shortcrust and challenging puff, flaky pastry is something any home cook can master. It knocks anything shop-bought out of the park!
You can make this pastry vegetarian, follow our tips below in the FAQs.
Use this pastry to make moreish mustard cheese straws.
Ingredients
- 225g plain flour, plus extra to dust
- 80g lard, cut into small chunks (or a vegetarian alternative, see FAQs)
- 80g unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Method
- Put the flour in a bowl with a pinch of salt. Add half the chunks of lard and butter, then rub them in with your fingertips to create a breadcrumb-like texture. Add around 6-8 tbsp ice cold water, a little at a time, until you form a dough (you may not need all the water as it depends on your flour, so go slowly). You can also do this step in a food processor.
- On a floured work surface, roll the dough out into a large rectangle (about 45cm x 23cm), with one of the short ends closest to you. Dot a third of the remaining butter and lard over the bottom two thirds of the pastry. Fold the top third of the pastry over the top to cover half the butter/lard pieces, then fold the bottom third up to make a neat rectangle with all the butter/lard enclosed. Seal the edges, pressing down with a rolling pin. Wrap the pastry with baking paper or put it in a food bag and transfer to the fridge to chill for 10 minutes.
- Remove the pastry from the fridge, unwrap it and put it on the work surface. Turn the pastry 90 degrees clockwise. Repeat the rolling out, dotting with lard and butter, folding, sealing, wrapping and chilling in step 2.
- Repeat this process a third time to use up all the remaining butter and lard, again turning it 90 degrees clockwise.
- Repeat once more but without adding any fat then wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes before using.
FAQs
Flaky pastry is made by rubbing fat into flour then adding water to make a dough – a process instantly recognisable to any regular shortcrust pastry maker. It’s then taken one step further as small chunks of fat are layered into the dough through a process of rolls and folds. As the amount of additional fat is relatively small and added as little chunks, the process is easily manageable (and most crucially, you only have to do it a few times!). It won’t achieve the sky-high towering rise of proper puff pastry, but it will create a rich, buttery texture that flakes into shards when cut into. It’s perfect for pies, sheet tarts and turnovers.
Butter gives pastry a better flavour but lard gives it flakier texture. So naturally, we use a 50:50 blend for the best of both worlds. If you’re vegetarian you can just use butter or a 50:50 mixture of vegetable fat and butter.
Flour is your friend. The last thing you want is for your pastry to stick to the work surface or your rolling pin because as you pull it away you’ll tear through all those beautiful layers. Scatter a good dusting of flour on the work surface and rolling pin, making sure you can slide the pastry on the work surface easily. If a patch of fat breaks through the top of the dough while you’re rolling out, simply scatter a little flour over the patch to prevent it sticking to your rolling pin. Once you’ve rolled out the pastry, you can use a pastry brush to remove any excess flour from the surface before adding a layer of fat and doing a fold (you don’t want a floury layer in the final pastry).
Nutrition
- 513kcals Calories
- 31.4g (9.8g saturated) Fat
- 10.2g Protein
- 45.5g (1.9g sugars) Carbs
- 3.9g Fibre
- 0.1g Salt
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