If you’d like to bake apple or potato puff pastry, you’d be met with two options. One is to use commercial short crust pastry, the other is to prepare your own. While using commercial pastry is an easy option that doesn’t require much time and effort, making your own short crust pastry is actually the more satisfying choice. Home-made pastry is healthier as you can control the ingredients that make up the pastry. You can add less butter or margarine, less salt and forgo the preservatives and colouring that are synonymous to store-bought pastry.
The result is guilt-free eating. You may be surprised at how easy it is to prepare your own pastry. It is truthfully more messy and time-consuming to prepare but the outcome is worth the time and effort. The trick is to prepare extra so you can freeze what is not needed now to be used later. This will save time.
Ingredients
500g plain flour
1 tbsp salt
150 g to 200 g margarine
1 to 2 cups water
Method
1. Pour plain flour into a big mixing bowl.
2. Add salt and mix the ingredients.
3. Cut margarine into cubes. Rub the margarine into the flour until the texture is fine and less crumbly.
4. Add water gradually to form a dough.
5. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle some plain flour onto it to make rolling easier.
6. Roll the dough till the thickness is just right.
7. Use round moulds to shape the dough and prepare it for the filling process.
You can add any filling that takes your fancy to each circular shaped dough: potatoes, carrots, peas, meat, apple etc. The list goes on. You may want to egg wash each filled pastry to prepare them for baking. Have a go at it and enjoy the fruits of your labour!