Pastry - Food and Dough Definitions - Types and Making Methods

Sep 13, 2026

Pastry is a flour-, water-, and fat-based dough used to make sweet or savoury baked dishes such as pies, tarts, quiches, and pasties. It is distinguished from bread by a higher fat content that creates a flaky or crumbly texture, and its preparation depends on careful mixing to control gluten development. The text explains how different pastries achieve distinct structures and expansion—through layered folding, steam generation, and thin multi-layer rolling—while also covering key tools and related pastry terms.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPaper Templates

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time3 min

AccessFree to download

Types of pastry

Shortcrust pastry

Flaky pastry

Puff pastry

Choux pastry

Phyllo (Filo)

Hot water crust pastry

Definitions and related pastry terms

Pastry chef with croquembouche

Pastry bag or piping bag

Pastry board

Pastry brake

Pastry This article is about the food. For the distributed hash table system, see Pastry (DHT) . See also: List of pastries Pastry is a dough of ﬂour, water and shortening that may Blackberry pie made with a pastry crust be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers’ confectionery. The word “Pastries”suggests many kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as ﬂour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called pastries. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches and pasties. [1][2] Pastry can also refer to the pastry dough,[3] from which such baked products are made. Pastry dough is rolled out thinly and used as a base for baked products. Pastry is diﬀerentiated from bread by having a higher fat content, which contributes to a ﬂaky or crumbly texture. A good pastry is light and airy and fatty, but ﬁrm enough to support the weight of the ﬁlling. When making a shortcrust pastry, care must be taken to blend the fat and ﬂour thoroughly before adding any liquid. This ensures that the ﬂour granules are adequately coated with fat and less likely to develop gluten. On the other hand, overmixing results in long gluten strands that toughen the pastry. In other types of pastry such as Danish pastry and croissants, the characteristic ﬂaky texture is achieved by repeatedly rolling out a dough similar to that for yeast bread, spreading it with butter, and folding it to produce many thin layers. Pecan and maple Danish pastry, apuﬀ pastry type Proﬁterole or cream puﬀ, a choux pastry Strudel, aphyllo pastry 1 Types Shortcrust pastry Shortcrust pastry is the simplest and most common pastry. It is made with ﬂour, fat, butter, salt, and water to bind the dough. [4] This is used 2 2 DEFINITIONS Pork pie on a plate mainly in tarts. It is also the pastry that is used most often in making a quiche. The process of making pastry includes mixing of the fat and ﬂour, adding water, and rolling out the paste. The fat is mixed with the ﬂour ﬁrst, generally by rubbing with ﬁngers or a pastry blender, which inhibits gluten formation by coating the gluten strands in fat and results in a short (as in crumbly; hence the term shortcrust), tender pastry. [5] A related type is the sweetened sweetcrust pastry, also known aspâte sucrée, in which sugar and egg yolks have been added (rather than water) to bind the pastry. [6] Flaky pastry Flaky pastry is a simple pastry that expands when cooked due to the number of layers. It bakes into a crisp, buttery pastry. The “puﬀ” is obtained by the shard-like layers of fat, most often butter or shortening, creating layers which expand in the heat of the oven when baked. Puﬀ pastry Puﬀ pastry has many layers that cause it to expand or “puﬀ” when baked. Puﬀ pastry is made using ﬂour, butter, salt, and water. The pastry rises up due to the water and fats expanding as they turn into steam upon heating. [7] Puﬀ pastries come out of the oven light, ﬂaky, and tender. Choux pastry Choux pastry is a very light pastry that is often ﬁlled with cream. Unlike other types of pastry, choux is in fact closer to a dough before being cooked which gives it the ability to be piped into various shapes such as the éclair and proﬁterole. Its name originates from the French choux, meaning cabbage, owing to its rough cabbage-like shape after cooking. [8] Choux begins as a mixture of milk or water and butter which are heated together until the butter melts, to which ﬂour is added to form a dough. Eggs are then beaten into the dough to further enrich it. This high percentage of water causes the pastry to expand into a light, hollow pastry. Initially, the water in the dough turns to steam in the oven and causes the pastry to rise; then the starch in the ﬂour gelatinizes, thereby solidifying the pastry. [9] Once the choux dough has expanded, it is taken out of the oven; a hole is made in it to let the steam ou

FAQs

What is pastry, and what distinguishes it from bread?

Pastry is a dough made from flour, water, and shortening/fat, used for sweet or savoury baked products. It has a higher fat content than bread, producing a flaky or crumbly texture.

How does gluten control affect shortcrust pastry?

In shortcrust pastry, fat is thoroughly blended with flour before adding liquid to coat gluten strands and reduce gluten development. Overmixing can form long gluten strands that toughen the pastry.

How do different pastry types create their characteristic texture?

Flaky and puff pastries rely on layers whose fat expands into steam during baking, while choux begins as a dough and expands due to water turning to steam, then sets as starch gelatinizes. Phyllo achieves delicacy through very thin, layered sheets.

Sep 13, 2026

Upload by Maya Linwood