Pastry

Pastry refers to various doughs and the baked goods made from them.

These doughs are often enriched with fats or eggs to create specific textures. While simple breads are excluded from this category, pastries are defined by being delicate, flaky, or crumbly. They can be sweet, often called baker's confectionery, or savory. The French term pâtisserie describes both these foods and the techniques used to create them. This term originally meant any food made in a dough, such as a meat pie. By the nineteenth century, it shifted to mean the ornate, sweet confections we recognize today.

Creating the perfect pastry requires careful control of ingredients and temperature.

For shortcrust pastry, a baker must mix fat into flour before adding water. A tool called a pastry blender is often used to chop the fat into the flour. This prevents body heat from the fingers from melting the fat. It also helps control the size of the fat chunks. After mixing, the dough must be chilled before it is rolled out. Chilling allows the fat to harden again, which creates flaky layers and inhibits gluten formation. This process ensures the final product is tender rather than tough.

Different doughs are categorized by their ingredients and how they behave when heated. Shortcrust pastry, or pâte brisée, is the most common type used for pies and tarts. A sweeter version is known as pâte sucrée, which uses sugar and egg yolks instead of water to bind the dough. Puff pastry is a laminated dough consisting of flour, butter, salt, and water. It contains many layers of fat that expand into steam in the oven, causing the pastry to "puff" upward.

Phyllo, or filo, is another type of dough that is rolled into paper-thin layers. These delicate sheets are often brushed with butter before being wrapped around a filling.

Choux pastry is a unique, light dough that is closer to a liquid mixture before cooking. Its name comes from the French word for cabbage, because of its rough shape after baking. To make it, milk or water and butter are heated together until the butter melts. Flour is added to form a dough, and then eggs are beaten in to enrich it. The high water content creates steam that causes the pastry to expand into a hollow shape.

Once expanded, a hole is made to let steam escape, and the pastry is returned to the oven to dry. This makes it perfect for filling with pastry cream, which is a vanilla-flavored custard. These light pastries can be used for sweet éclairs or savory appetizers like tuna or chicken.

History shows that pastry traditions have evolved across many different cultures.

Ancient Mediterranean civilizations like the Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians used filo-style pastries. In the 5th century BC, Greek plays mentioned small pastries filled with fruit. Romans used flour, oil, and water to create dough covers for meats to keep them juicy. However, they often did not eat the pastry itself. In Northern Europe, medieval chefs used shortening and butter to create stiffer pastries. They even made "huff paste," or coffins, which were stiff, empty pastries eaten by servants. Actual pastry recipes only began appearing regularly around the mid-16th century.

Global trade and specific masters have shaped how we eat pastry today. The use of chocolate in Western pastry increased after Spanish and Portuguese traders brought it from the New World in the 1600s. Many culinary historians name Antonin Carême, who lived from 1784 to 1833, as the first great master of modern pastry. In Asia, pastry traditions are equally deep but often use different ingredients. Chinese pastries may use rice or sweet bean paste, such as the mooncakes used during the Mid Autumn Festival.

In Japan, specialized confections like mochi and manjū are common. While Western pastries are generally much sweeter, Asian pastries offer a distinct variety of flavors.

The science of pastry relies heavily on the chemistry of wheat flour and fats. When flour meets water, it develops gluten, which creates the tough, elastic strands found in bread. To make pastry tender, bakers add fat to coat the gluten strands and slow their development. Using a pastry blender or rubbing the fat in helps achieve this "short" or crumbly texture. Different fats also change the result; for example, lard or suet provides a coarse structure. Even the type of butter matters, as clarified butter, or ghee, is virtually water-free. Understanding these chemical interactions allows bakers to create everything from heavy savory pies to light, airy treats.