Perfecting puff, shortcrust and filo pastry with your stand mixer
Who doesn’t love tucking into a comforting pie on a cold evening, or enjoying a slice of delicious apple tart for dessert? Many of us are daunted by the prospect of making our own pastry, but the fact is it’s easier to make than you think.
The core ingredients of any type of pastry are flour, water and fat, but they are used in different ratios to produce different results. In this guide, we’ll share how to make three of the main types with your stand mixer - shortcrust, puff and filo, along with some delicious sweet and savoury pastry recipes for you to try.
Shortcrust pastry
Used to make sweet and savoury tarts, quiches and pies like this delicious chicken and wild mushroom pie, shortcrust is a thick pastry that’s really versatile. It’s also super quick and simple to make, especially when you use your stand mixer to work the butter in.
Preparing ahead
This easy recipe makes 440g of shortcrust pastry. That’s enough for a pie or tart serving 6 people, using a 26cm/10.25 inch tart pan. It only takes 5 minutes to make using your stand mixer, plus 30 minutes chilling time.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Ingredients
125g unsalted butter, cubed and at room temperature
250g plain flour
5g salt
1 egg yolk
50g iced water
Making shortcrust
Fit the K-Beater to your stand mixer. Add the cubed butter, flour and salt to the mixer bowl and fit the splashguard.
Mix on speed 2 for 2 minutes. Add the egg yolk and water and mix on speed 2 for a further minute. Using your mixer for this stage means there’s less risk of overworking your pastry, which happens when it is handled too much by warm hands. This causes the butter to melt and can produce a dry, hard pastry which is difficult to roll out.
Tip the mixture onto a surface and gently knead with your hands until it comes together to form a dough. Be careful not to handle it for too long.
Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
Puff pastry
Created by a process called lamination, where the butter and pastry dough are repeatedly folded to produce layers, puff pastry is rich and buttery. It’s used for pie lids, tart bases, sausage rolls, vol-au-vents and cheese straws, as well as sweet treats like apple turnovers and mille-feuille. Impress your guests with this raspberry, passionfruit and mango mille-feuille, where the flaky pastry is layered with sliced mango and passionfruit vanilla cream, and topped with a fruity coulis.
Getting started
This puff pastry recipe makes enough for 6 medium sausage rolls, or 12 mini sausage rolls, or a pie lid for a 10-12 inch pie. You will need 2 hours 15 minutes to make it, which includes chilling time.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Ingredients
15g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
100g water
200g plain flour
3g salt
150g unsalted butter, chilled
Making puff pastry
Attach the dough hook to your stand mixer. Add the water, plain flour, salt and cooled, melted unsalted butter to the mixer bowl.
With the splashguard fitted, mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes, until a dough forms. Wrap with cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
Place the chilled unsalted butter between two pieces of parchment paper on your work surface. Use a rolling pin to roll out into a 15 x 10cm rectangle and set aside.
Lightly flour your surface and roll the chilled pastry out into a 30 x 30cm square. Place the butter in the centre of the pastry and fold over the edges of the pastry to fully envelop the butter. Tightly pinch the seams to seal.
Roll out until 3-5mm (⅛”) thick and fold the bottom edge up to the centre. With cold hands (run your wrists under cold water to cool if needed, and dry off) fold the top down to cover the first fold. Give the dough a quarter turn and repeat the rolling and folding process. Wrap with cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
Repeat the rolling and folding process twice more (6 folds in total), chilling for 30 minutes between each folding. Chill until needed.
La pâte filo
La pâte filo, ou pâte phyllo, est utilisée dans la cuisine méditerranéenne : en Grèce, en Turquie, dans les Balkans, pour des pâtisseries comme les baklavas ; et également pour les strudels, un dessert allemand.
Liste des ingrédients
Cette recette permet de préparer 9 feuilles. Le temps de préparation est de 30 minutes. L'accessoire laminoir est indispensable pour étaler les feuilles très finement.
Voici ce dont vous aurez besoin :
Ingrédients
250 g de farine 00 Une pincée de sel 100 ml d'eau chaude 10 ml d'huile d'olive Farine de riz, pour saupoudrer
Préparation de la pâte filo
Versez la farine 00 et le sel dans le bol et installez le pétrin. Faites tourner le robot sur vitesse 1 en ajoutant progressivement l'eau tiède et l'huile d'olive.
Une fois la pâte amalgamée, mélangez à vitesse 2 pendant 1 minute. Si le mélange semble sec, ajoutez un peu d'eau, mais seulement une très petite quantité. La pâte doit être ferme, mais sans être humide ni collante. Enveloppez la pâte dans du film alimentaire et laissez-la reposer à température ambiante pendant 5 minutes.
Installez l'accessoire laminoir sur le robot. Réglez l'écartement des rouleaux sur 0 et saupoudrez un peu de farine de riz entre les rouleaux.
Sortez la pâte du film alimentaire et divisez-la en neuf morceaux égaux. Couvrez les pâtons d'un torchon humide.
Aplatissez le premier morceau de pâte et formez un rectangle grossier. Saupoudrez légèrement de farine de riz.
Avec la vitesse du robot réglée sur 1, passez la pâte plusieurs fois entre les rouleaux, en ajustant à chaque fois le réglage. Etalez la pâte jusqu'à la position 9. Placez ensuite la feuille de filo sur une feuille de papier sulfurisé saupoudrée de farine de riz. Saupoudrez le dessus de farine de riz et couvrez-la d'un torchon humide.
Etalez les morceaux de pâte restants. Empilez les feuilles de filo, saupoudrez le dessus de chacune d'elles de farine de riz et couvrez-les d'un torchon humide. Si vous ne les utilisez pas immédiatement, couvrez-les d'un film alimentaire et mettez-les au réfrigérateur. Vous pouvez congeler la pâte filo jusqu'à 3 mois.