Believe it or not, there are still some people who make their own pastry despite the fact that every city I can think of has amazing shops where one can buy the stuff nowadays. Cape Town, for example, has Bonjour Pâtisserie where Daniel makes the best chocolate éclairs I’ve ever tasted anywhere (including Paris) and I’d kill for a dozen or so of those right about now. So if you live in Cape Town, you know where to go. Plus his croissants are to die for but be wise, order in advance and collect them early. That’s just how he rolls. Today most cities have

good pâtisseries and a country like Italy seems to have one in most villages. With a basic knowledge of pastry, you could probably wing it through most occasions and with a tweak here and tweak there, you can pretty much do anything with what I’ve supplied here. I included recipes for all the most important stuff like croissants, short crust pastry, palmiers and basic choux pastry – the stuff nobody can live without. Most importantly, this this is for my daughter who lives too far away for me to be the mother I

always dreamt I would be, so Lisa, this one’s for you! Pastry was commonly eaten in the ancient Mediterranean. The Egyptians learnt the art of baking from the Babylonians and by 2,600-2,100 BC they were already baking animal shaped cakes that they often used for sacrifices and pastries. I never could understand this sacrificing thing. Spending hours baking something and taking great care that it doesn’t get burnt, only to burn it seems really stupid to me. The Greek playwrite and scholar, Aristophanes, mentions fruit filled pastries, honey flans and beautifully decorated tortes in his plays between 450-385 BC (one of their specialities, a ring cake known as the Dispyrus was submerged in wine and eaten hot). I’ve said before that they taught the Romans how to cook and so we see that they learnt well because by the 4^th century AD, the Romans were baking a pastillarium which, I suspect, was more pastry than cake.

They also covered meat with with pastry but it wasn’t the kind that was meant to be eaten. They had a bit of problem with pastry, though, because they had to use olive oil which simply doesn’t make good pastry – the pastry becomes limp. (I tried that when traveller son decided to be a vegan for 2 years). As a matter of interest, by the time Christ was born, there were 300 independent bakers in Rome and according to Cato (who loved lists, also made a list of the all the items for sale in one of these bakeries; it’s hellishly long but it does seem that they made a floppy short crust pastry and filo pastry) and, indicates, that professional baking probably started around 234 BC or thereabouts). Got it? Pastry came from the Babylonians to the Egyptians, then the Greeks via the Phoenicians. Simple.  In Medieval Times it was the Northern Europeans who made beautiful pastries because they used lard and butter and not olive oil (and I’ve mentioned that the Greeks were very snotty about butter).

CROISSANTS

Ingredients

• 625 g strong bread flour
• 12 g salt
• 75 g sugar
• 20 g dried yeast
• water, for mixing
• 500 g butter, chilled
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

• Sift the flour and salt into a big mixing bowl, stir in the sugar and add the dry yeast before mixing in a little water until the mixture forms a pliable dough, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it until it feels quite elastic and smooth.
• Now put the dough back in the bowl, cover it and put the fridge for an hour before placing on the floured surface again and rolling out into a rectangular shape (about 30 x 60 cm).
• Beat the butter to soften very slightly and roll out into a rectangle that’s about a cm thick, put the butter in the centre of the dough so that it covers two thirds of the dough and fold the rest of the dough over the butter (see the post on puff pastry, next to this one); you should now have three layers of dough.
• Return it to the fridge for another hour, then dust the whole table with flour and roll out the dough into a rectangular shape again, repeat the folding process again and put it right back into the fridge yet again, do this rolling, folding and refrigerating a further two times and then wrap the dough into the cling wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.
• The next morning , remove from the fridge, roll out the dough thinly (to about 3 mm) and then cut out the dough into square (about 20 x 20 cm).
• Cut each square diagonally so that you get two triangles from each square, put all the triangles on the working surface with the point of the triangle away from you and then roll each triangle over itself into the traditional crescent shape.
• Put the croissants on parchment paper lined baking trays and allow them to rise for about one and a half hours until they have almost doubled in size.
• Preheat the oven to 200 c.
• Egg wash the croissants lightly and bake for about 10 – 15 minutes until they’re dark golden, eat them warm or hot from the oven.

Northern Europeans servants got to eat the empty pastry only, maybe with a touch of egg glaze but only the ‘masters’ were permitted to have the pastry filled. In those days upper classes ate shockingly unhealthily. Larousse says ‘’it was the Crusaders who gave a decisive impetus to patisserie by discovering sugar cane and puff pastry in the East. This led to pastry cooks, bakers and restaurateurs all claiming the same products as their specialities….King Louis IX tried to create order by giving status” to the profession and so the art of pastry making was recognized. Choux pastry was invented in 1540 by Panterelli, Catherine de Medici’s chef but the art only started to develop properly in the 17^th century and reached it’s peak in the 19^th century.

PALMIERS

Ingredients

• 250 g puff pastry
• 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
• 100g demerara caster sugar
• Flour to dust
• Icing sugar, to dust
• Double cream for serving

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200 C.
• Roll out the pastry onto a lightly floured surface until it’s about 1 cm thick and then brush it lightly with the beaten egg and sprinkle with the caster sugar.
• Roll up as if it were a Swiss roll and slice into 1cm rounds.
• Put each palmier onto a non-stick baking sheet and bake until they are risen and golden brown (it shouldn’t take longer than10 minutes.
• Remove from the oven, dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream.

INTERESTING DATES

• 1638  – almond tartlets invented by Ragueneau
• 1740 – the baba is introduced into France by Stanislas Leszczynski (but the Greeks made it first)
• 1760 – Avice creates toasted choux and ramekins
• 1805 – the horn invented by Lorsa a Bordeaux pastry cook
• 1784 – 1833 – Antonin Carème becomes the  first great master of pastry making in modern times when he invents the croquembouche, vols-au-vent and while he’s at, perfects puff pastry (then we’re not even discussing the other stuff he invented).

By the end of the 18^th century there were about 100 pastry chefs in France and at the end of 1986 there were 12,500 in the same country but France wasn’t the only country in the world that invented pastries, though. The Chinese made unbelievably light delicacies from a variety of flours, including rice flour and Korea were responsible for treats like the tteok, the hangwa and the yaksi with Japan bringing her side when she invented mocha and manju. Asian pastries differ in that they’re much sweeter.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

The difference between pastry and any other dough is that the pastry is very fattening and because there’s so much fat, it flakes or crumbles. Except choux pastry which refuses to fall into that category. Decent pastry should be light and not stodgy but still be strong enough to support the stuff inside.  In the case of short pastry it must (please) not be so crumbly that it breaks to pieces before you start eating which is why you should really not add liquid to the flour/fat mixture before you’ve mixed it. All the little grains of flour need to be coated with fat so that they’re less likely to develop gluten but if you mix it for too long, they’ll develop long gluten strands and the pastry will be tough and when you bit into it, there will be an unpleasant resistance. (In bread you want the strands but not here.) Danish pastry and croissants become flaky because you slap butter on to the pastry before folding it up and rolling it out. That way there are many layers. However, the science of pastry is quite complicated but I’m not going to deal with it right here right now.

PASTRY IMPLEMENTS

• Pastry – see above
• Pastry board – should really be made from marble but it’s often wood and used to for making pastry. Duh.
• Pastry brake – those rollers used in professional shops (unless you’re an aspiring pastry chef) for working the pastry; it looks like a pasta making machine … well, almost.
• Pastry case – pastry that has already been baked so that you can fill with sweet or savoury fillings.
• Pastry cream – confectioners custard and it’s made with flour, milk, vanilla and eggs.
• Pastry cutters – those metal or plastic shapes that you probably have in your drawer with one sharp edge and one not so sharp for cutting out cookies or pastry; they rarely work.
• Pastry blender – an implement for mixing the flour and the fat that you don’t need if you have a decent food processor.

SHORT CRUST PASTRY

• I think this kind of pastry is the easiest kind to make and most people make it without even measuring the ingredients accurately. That’s fine but if you want to make it really well, there are a few hints and I’m going list them to make it easier:
• It’s a good idea to work in a cool place because pastry and hot surroundings don’t agree and because most hot kitchens are damp and that’s a sure way to make mediocre or even flopped pastry.
• Use the right flour (you’ll need fine sifted plain flour & not self-raising flour or any flour with baking powder in it because it will guarantee a spongy crust), the right fat (it has to be firm but not rock hard) because it will combine with the flour properly) and ice-cold water.
• My mother told me over and over again that you need a light but firm touch; what she meant was that you treat pastry quite differently to bread – bread needs a lot of kneading but pastry needs to have the fat rubbed in with the tips of your fingers and you need to aerate it (by lifting your hands up quite high over the bowl when you’re rubbing in the fat); also over-rubbing will make the pastry greasy.
• Take care with the amount of water that you put into the pastry; of course it will depend on the flour that you use but remember if the pastry is too dry, it will crack and shrink while it’s baking and you’ll have a dry, tough & hard crust but if it’s too wet, it will lose shape when you bake the thing and the pastry will also be tough.
• A cold marble pastry board is really the best thing – I always used an unglazed marble tile that my dad gave me and it was perfect but I lost it when I moved; laminated plastic is okay but wood is really not the answer unless you use it only for baking (wood absorbs smells and flavours).
• Always chill all pastry  before you use it.

RICH SHORTCUT PASTRY

Ingredients

• 240 g plain flour
• 180 g butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 flat tbsp caster sugar (if you’re making something sweet)
• 1 egg yolk
• Pinch salt
• 2 – 3 tbsp ice cold water

Method

• Sift the flour with the salt into a mixing bowl and  drop in the butter, then make sure all the pieces are coated in flour before you start rubbing them in until the mixture looks like small breadcrumbs.
• Stir in the sugar, mix the egg yolk with the water and put into the ‘bread crumb’ mixture and mix quickly, preferably with a palette knife to form a firm dough.
• Turn this onto a floured board and knead as slightly as possibly until it’s smooth, wrap in cling wrap and pop into the fridge for at least half an hour before you use it.
• Tip: depending on what I’m making, I often grate a little lemon zest or orange zest into the flour for a really nice fresh taste.