People often ask me about my pastry. “How did you get it like this?” is something I hear time and time again. I try to make my own pastry for all my food. Phyllo dough is an exception because store-bought is better than what I could make at home.

So here is a list of my top ten “things to keep in mind when making pastry”.

1. Have clean and DRY equipment. It’s amazing what a drop of fat will do when you try and whip egg whites. Or a drop of water when you are going to make molded chocolates. You don not want to throw out $10 worth of ingredients because there was a “little drop of something” in the bowl. Get them super clean and super dry before starting.
2. Choose the appropriate pastry recipe. If your filling is super sweet, don’t use a pate sucree – it will just be a big mass of sugar – use a pie dough or something with more fat and less sugar. Likewise if your filling is going to contain alot of eggs and minimal sugar, go with a sweet dough.
3. Have your eggs and dairy at room temperature. Eggs whip better when they are warm. Mixing cold cream with warm melted chocolate for mousse or pastry cream will just create a mess when the chocolate seizes up.
4. Do not overmix your pastry dough. Once the dough comes together, STOP MIXING! All you are doing at that point is making pasta dough, and your pastry will come out brittle and hard.
5. Sift dry ingredients. Its not just to get uniform distribution in the liquid, but it helps ensure your leaveners are evenly distributed throughout your pastry.
6. Use more Butter. While shortening makes your pastry feel good, butter makes it TASTE good. I don’t use shorteneing very often, I use butter, and oil for certain vegan pastries.(You might also consider duckfat, porkfat or beef tallow for savory dishes, but make sure you add a little water.)
7. Use decent, and absolutely FRESH ingredients. Not using organic flour probably won’t wreck your pastry, but if there are moths flying around in the bag, time to order new flour!
8. Be careful when par-baking pastry shells. If your recipe calls for you to put your pastry in the oven to bake it part way, make sure its only part way. Sometimes people bake pastry until its done, only to realize the tart goes back in the oven for another 30 minutes. Uh oh!
9. Use moisture barriers. Brush the bottom of your tart shells with some egg york or a thin layer of melted chocolate (make sure it’s a THIN layer). This helps keep the pastry dry if you use a wet filling like pastry cream.
10. Know the basic ratios. 1+2+3 cookie dough will get you far. So will 4+2+1 for pie dough. There are a few key ones, and knowing them is a simple and effective way to ensure you have properly scaled a recipe. These ratios are available in good scolarly pastry books (“Baking at Pastry at the CIA”) and some home-based books (like Michael Ruhlman’s book “Ratio”).
11. Get a substitution list. Books like Cookwise are wonderful references to have handy if you are out of something or can’t find a certain ingredient. No cake flour? Use .8 parts AP flour and .2 parts cornstarch. No AP? 1/2 bread + 1/2 pastry.
12. Experiment! There are lots of different ways to make even the same ingredient. Try a couple out and see what you like.
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