at Sat, 20 Nov 2004 05:14:37 GMT in <1pAnd.71091$5K2.57893@attbi_s03>,
(Echo44) wrote :

>
>Any one have a recipe and/or tips? I just tried it using my normal
>(AP flour) recipe and had disastrous results.
>

What was your recipe and how did it go awry? This may help us better
identify what you needed to do.

Using pastry flour in a pie crust requires at most only minor adjustments,
not major modifications. The basic principles are still the same:

Cut in the fat only long enough to get a coarse mix reminiscent of clumpy
soil.

Use as little water as you can get away with and still have the crust hold
together.

Work the dough as little as possible.

Keep everything well-chilled.

I have 2 basic crusts I make using pastry flour. One uses half lard, half
butter in a ratio of 4:5 fat:flour by weight (which is 2:5 by volume). For
5 cups of flour, you then use 1 cup butter, 1 cup lard. The other is all
butter, in a ratio of 1:1 fat:flour (1:2 by volume). I also add a pinch of
salt, pretty standard routine.

I cut the fats in using 2 knives (which I find makes for slightly better
results than a pastry cutter), then sprinkle just enough water to get the
whole mass to bind together. It's usually not very much. For 5 cups flour,
I generally measure 6 oz to use, add about 2/3 of this, then add some or
all of the rest as needed to keep the thing together. Pastry flour does
generally absorb less water than A/P.

When rolling, you want to be a little more gentle than with A/P. Pastry-
flour crust has more of a tendency to crack and break if you're too
vigorous with the rolling. I use only the weight of the pin to roll it out
and don't exert any force on it whatsoever.

Don't try to make puff pastry, though, with pastry flour. It doesn't really
have enough gluten to stretch into the thin sheets puff pastry creates.
All-purpose is a better bet in this case. So if your pie was using puff
pastry, this may have been the source of grief. Also, just to make sure, it
wasn't cake flour you were using? That's also unsuitable for pie crusts of
any type. Finally, was your pastry flour white or whole-wheat? If you were
using your method for white AP flour with whole wheat pastry flour, this
could also have created difficulties. Whole wheat pastry flour also doesn't
hold together as readily and absorbs more water. Generally if I were making
a pie crust with whole wheat flour I'd up the fat and water, and lower the
amount of flour. However, I lean away from whole-wheat flours for pie crust
because the coarseness of whole wheat flour IMHO interferes with the flaky
sensation of a good pie crust, which is its raison d'etre.

--
Alex Rast

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